


Welcome to the ChestNut house

by Doctor959



Series: The Adventures of Retro Klaus [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: BAMF!Ben Hargreeves, Big Sister Allison, F/M, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Protective Ben Hargreeves, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:21:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 52,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25668130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doctor959/pseuds/Doctor959
Summary: Season 2 Spoilers.......When Klaus gets himself caught up in some trouble in 1963 Dallas, he tries to reach out to the only living sibling he can find. But when things get mixed up and he finds himself without a voice, he has to trust someone else to help him.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: The Adventures of Retro Klaus [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906954
Comments: 690
Kudos: 1475





	1. Chapter 1

Like many times in Klaus' life, one thing had just led to another, one thing being stopping at a bar for a drink, the other thing being following a guy who had to be hiding a great set of shoulders under that shirt to a bar in an area of Dallas he had yet to explore. 

"Klaus, I don't know that this is a good idea," Ben had warned as they followed the man past the clubs with dark doorways and men with hats tipped low over their eyes. Sure, it looked shady but so did lots of places Klaus frequented over his lifetime. 

The man with the shoulders held a door open to a smokey club and it wasn't long before Klaus was tucked away in a nook around the side of the bar straddled over the man's lap. 

Sure, the lights may have been particularly dim, providing shady corners that his brother pointed out while he tried to get his hands under the man's shirt and feel if those shoulders were as good as advertised, but maybe it was just the aesthetic or whatever. Had he been slightly more sober, maybe he would have listened to his brother’s ramblings about _you know what sort of club this is_ and something about _1963_.

Who needed Ben's warnings when he was finally actually getting somewhere with this guy? 

"Klaus! Get out of here, now!"

He glanced sideways, his mouth still latched on to the man's neck with the intent to glare at his mood-wrecking brother when he noticed the commotion near the door. 

Then the yelling started. 

Chairs toppled as men in the front of the bar scrambled away from the intruders - straight-laced looking guys with baseball bats and angry snarls. Some of the guys storming through the front door were young men, just into their twenties while some of the ones at the back looked a couple of decades older. 

Shoulders wasted no time in throwing Klaus off his lap, letting him tumble onto the sticky carpet. He landed with an _ompf_ on his back. 

"Klaus, get up! You have to run!" 

Klaus fought his drunken limbs to get to his feet, adrenaline hitting him in a rush. A guy that looked far too much like a smaller Luther made eye contact and raised his weapon - a wooden plank. He almost expected pitchforks as well. 

Klaus ducked the swing, grabbing a flimsy wooden chair to shield the second swing. The man broke through the chair with his plank. Klaus dropped the remnants, holding his hands out in defence. 

"Klaus, look right!" 

Klaus turned to see another man raise a metal bat with two hands, striking straight down. He blocked the hit with his forearm, sacrificing the pain shooting through his wrist to save himself from a head shot that would have laid him out, then threw a sharp kick at the man's gut. He staggered back into the first guy, giving Klaus enough time to vault over the table and run in the opposite direction. 

There were around ten men storming the bar, bats lifting high in the air before sinking behind over-turned tables with sickening thuds. Klaus did not want his body to be making one of those sounds. 

"This way!" Ben called, pointing to an unmarked door behind the bar. The bar tender was cowering behind it, hands over his head. Klaus pushed through the door and slammed it shut behind him, wishing he was sober enough for Ben to actually help. 

The room was like an office of some sort. Klaus frantically jumped onto the desk and pushed at the small window high on the wall that Ben was pointing to. It levered open with a squeak, giving Klaus a small gap to shimmy through. Experience told him to squeeze out feet- first. The drop to the ground outside was higher than he'd anticipated, jarring his ankle. He ignored it, using the wall to claw his way back to his feet and escape. 

The alley had only one way out onto the street where the front door of the bar lay. If he was quick enough, he could run out while the mob were occupied inside the bar. 

As Klaus first heard the sirens wail, relief swept over him. He stopped at the mouth of the alley, resting his hands on his knees as he caught his breath. 

"Oh thank Christ," Klaus gasped, looking up at Ben. His brother didn't look as relaxed. 

"I don't think they're here to help."

Klaus watched as a cop dragged one of the escaped club patrons along the concrete pavement, liberally using his baton to stop the man struggling. 

"Shit."

"Turn around!" 

Klaus spun around to see the angry mob were marching down the alley from a door at the side of the building, weapons raised. 

The guy at the front spotted Klaus and pointed at him with a shout. 

"We're gonna kill you, queer!"

Lucky thing Klaus was a fast runner. 

As soon as he broke into a run, he heard the men give chase. Klaus ran down the street, hoping to get past the cops before they even noticed him. 

"Stop him!" came the shouts from behind him. One of the cops lazily turned around to see Klaus running, trying to pass by the small gap between the police cars and the shop fronts. He struck his baton towards Klaus' shins, but his long legs deftly leapt over the obstacle. He felt his ankle jar again as he landed, but there was no way in hell he was stopping now. He made for an alley way across the road, hoping he'd be able to scale a fence to put between them. 

Klaus was no stranger to harassment. He’d been called every name under the sun back in his own time, even had to deal with drunk guys giving him a push and a shove from time to time, but it was never like this. He’d always known that if things got really out of hand, he could defend himself (he _had_ been trained at the Academy after all) and he would be in the right, or at least somewhere close to it. 

He’d forgotten how far civil rights had come in the last sixty years.

He ran for what felt like ages, ducking behind dumpsters and into alleyways like a cat, his hand clamped over his own mouth to hide the sound of his heavy breathing. At one point a police car sitting in a laneway caused him to skid to a stop and double back, hoping that he hadn't been seen. 

He wasn’t afraid to admit it, but he was scared. Ben must have been too from the way his own voice shook as he gave Klaus directions.

After almost ten minutes huddled under a fire escape, Klaus dared whisper to Ben. 

"Do you think they've gone?"

Ben walked out of the alley, looking left and right. "The sirens seemed to have gone," he said dubiously. “I can’t see any police or crazy mob.”

Klaus took that to mean he could jump down from his hiding spot and head back to the cheap flat he'd been renting above a recording studio. The noise had deterred other tenants, but the sound drowned out the ghosts nicely. 

Trying to act as normal and calm as possible, he entered the street, eyes darting around to scan the few revellers and homeless drunks wandering the streets at this hour. He was wearing a half-unbuttoned lurid shirt which he quickly buttoned up and a pair of tight pants slung low on his hips. For the first time in his life, he wished he was wearing something that fit in more. He saw a hardware store he recognised as on the way back to his house and turned the corner. He was pretty far from his flat, but if he could get out of this area quickly…

He walked straight into two policemen, bouncing off the chest of the larger one. The other one was quick to grab his arm. 

"Oh I'm so sorry officer," Klaus said with a smile, trying to keep the shake out of his voice. "I was a million miles away, I'll just be on my way home.."

The cop didn't loosen his grip on Klaus' arm. He shared a pointed look with the bigger cop before turning back to Klaus. 

"May we ask where you’ve been tonight?" he asked with false politeness. 

"Me? Oh, I was just out for a drink with some workmates on Main street and got a bit lost on the way home…"

A thick hand closed around his throat and pushed him back into the bricks of the shop front.

"I think you're lying to us," the bigger one with the square haircut insisted, squeezing his hand tighter against Klaus' throat. 

"I swear!" Klaus rasped, holding his hands out, realising too late that he was showing his tattoos. He quickly dropped his hands. 

"Didn't one of those guys say something about a queer with hand tattoos?" the shorter one asked, sliding his baton out of his belt. 

The hit to his chest winded him, and with the hand still clamped tightly around his throat, oxygen was becoming something Klaus was seriously lacking. Klaus slapped his hands ineffectually at the man's fist as the black spots started to dance across his vision. It was worse than when Luther had done it.

A punch to his gut doubled him over and thankfully tore his neck out of the bigger cop's grip. Klaus gasped, clawing at his raw throat as he desperately tried to refill his lungs.

He didn't see the boot coming to his face.

"Klaus!" Ben screamed desperately. Klaus clung onto consciousness, knowing that passing out now would mean another visit to the little girl upstairs, and maybe not one he'd come back from. He was still gasping for air.

"Klaus! Cover your head!" 

Klaus just got his arms over his head in time before the next hit, but he didn't manage to block the sharp sting against the back of his neck, or the blows to his unprotected back. 

"Get off him!" Ben shrieked. "Leave him alone!" 

Klaus caught a blast of blue in his obscured vision then a loud thud against the pavement. 

"What the…" one of the cops said before there was another thump. 

Klaus peeked between his arms to see Ben standing behind the two cops, now knocked out on the pavement. 

"C'mon, we have to move quickly," Ben said shakily, looping one of Klaus' arms over his solid shoulder. "I won't stay like this if you pass out."

Ben hauled him to his feet, wincing at the sharp cry Klaus let out. 

"Sorry, I don't think we're too far,"

"T-t," Klaus tried to say, sharp pain searing his throat. He let his head drop.

"Oh no, no, stay with me Klaus. We gotta get you out of here. Allison's is only a few blocks away."

"Ah?" Klaus slurred, feeling the heaviness in his limbs start to dull the pain. Unconsciousness was pulling at him.

"I saw her today, and I followed her. I was going to tell you when you sobered up tomorrow."

Klaus hummed in response. He hadn't seen any of his siblings other than Ben since he'd landed two and a half years ago. 

Soon they were standing outside a brick house (well, Ben was standing). 

Ben left Klaus on the front lawn for a moment with the threat that he would cut his hair if he fell asleep. 

He returned a few seconds later. 

"Allison's not home. She must have already left for work."

Klaus peered out of his only working eye to see that the sun had started to rise. 

"Some other guy is in the house," Ben says in confusion, "I dunno who he is and we have to be careful, but there's a shed out back, you can hide out there until she gets home tonight. Then we can explain."

Ben ended up dragging Klaus around the back through a thankfully unlocked gate and into a shed. It was almost big enough to be a garage, but with a smaller door rather than a large one for a car. There was no light, but enough filtered through the skylight cut in the roof from the morning sun for that not to matter. 

Ben had only just managed to shut the door behind them when Klaus promptly passed out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ray hears a noise . . .

Raymond Chestnut was going mad. 

Nope, there, he heard it again. 

He relocked his car door and slipped the keys back in his pocket. He wasn’t going to be taken for a fool by kids looking to distract him while they stole his car. He had to drive to the other side of town for his interview with a new school (hopefully one with a more inclusive staffing policy) and he didn’t want to be late, but he definitely heard . . . 

Yep, that was coughing. Coming from his shed.

Ray looked around for something to hold in his hand as he investigated, having to settle on a garden stake. It was a pretty quiet neighborhood, but on the cheaper side putting it close to some of the rougher areas of Dallas. Still, he and Allison has turned their modest house into a bright and happy home. The last thing he wanted was for a thief to be laying in wait to case their house. 

He crept forwards, listening as another set of hacking coughs punctuated by a sharp wheeze confirmed his fears.

Someone was in his shed. 

The noise they were making made it less and less likely to be a thief, but he still needed to move whoever it was on. Folding his shirt sleeves up carefully (he didn’t want to crease them before his interview), Ray prepared to confront kids pulling a prank or maybe even a homeless guy. 

He swung the door open, letting light flood into the space in a narrow strip. 

He didn’t see the man at first, not until another cough echoed through the tin shed. 

He could only just make out his form in the shadowy space outside the beam of light. Curled up on his side, in the dirt, back facing towards him, was a skinny man. As Ray's eyes adjusted to the dark, he noticed that he was dressed in clothes far too flashy to be homeless. 

Maybe he was a drunk?

“Hey,” Ray shouted, prodding the man’s back with the stake. “Mind telling me what you are doing in my shed?”

The man groaned, curling further into himself.

"C'mon man, you need to move on. You can't stay here." 

Ray used the stick to roll the man over onto his back. He flopped over, head lolling bonelessly into the light from the open door. 

The man was in a bad way. Blood streamed across his face, pulled from his temple over to the other side by gravity. There were fresh bruises along his cheekbone and jaw, sealing one eye closed. The other one was only open a slit. 

Ray leaned the stick against the side of the shed. This man was definitely not a thief, but Ray still had no idea what he was doing in his shed. He checked his watch. He really needed to get going. 

“Do you need me to call you an ambulance?” Ray offered. The man’s other eye shot open revealing a startling green.

“Ng - nh!” he attempted, shaking his head weakly in the dirt. He tried to drag himself upright but couldn’t seem to get his arms under himself. He was in a bad way.

“Okay, no ambulance.” If Ray was being honest, he was relieved. It wouldn’t be good calling an ambulance to his house to pick up a battered white boy. Questions would be asked. It could endanger the cause. 

Ray crouched next to the man, checking for a pulse at his neck. The man hissed at the contact, pulling away. That’s when he noticed the angry bruising around this guy’s throat. 

Maybe he’d just been in a nasty bar fight and needed somewhere to lick his wounds until he went home to his girl. 

The man rolled onto his other side, managing to get himself into a sitting position against the cooler box. He looked over his shoulder at the bright yellow folding chair that was for some reason set up rather than packed away with the others, nodding to himself. 

The interview would only take an hour, maybe two hours max. He wasn’t about to let a stranger into his house, but surely he could stay in the shed until he got back? Then he could sort out this mess. 

"Sorry, I have a job interview now, but when I get back I can drop you off wherever it is you need to go."

Or hopefully he would just be gone by the time he got back. 

He didn’t _look_ dangerous, but looks could be deceiving. Still, how much harm could he get up to in Ray’s shed in the state he was in?

It would only be a couple of hours. 

Exactly seventy minutes later, Ray was slamming the car door behind him. He had just wasted a round trip across town only for the interview panel to make their decision the moment he walked in the door. They weren't even listening when he spoke of his achievements at Harvard or the impressive scores his past students had achieved in their final exams. 

That man better have cleared off from his shed. Allison was due home in a couple of hours and he didn't want to scare her with a dishevelled man hiding out in their yard, although something told him she wasn't that easily scared. They were still getting to know each other. Their courtship had been short, and they were only in their first year of marriage, but Ray could not recall ever being this sure about anything. 

He swung the door open only to find the man curled back up on the floor in the dark. Ray retrieved the stick from earlier and gave the man a prod. 

"Hey man, time to go. I can drive you somewhere . . ."

He really didn't want to get involved in whatever this was. He had Allison to think about. He had the cause. 

The man swatted away the stick with a grunt that dissolved into a hacking cough. He pulled himself back up to seated, looking intently at Ray. 

"Is there anyone I can call? Anywhere I can drop you?"

The man shook his head, wincing at the movement. He rubbed his neck which was filthy with dirt. 

So he was homeless. Great. 

That complicated things. How was he going to get this guy to move on? 

Ray could hear his mother's voice as soon as he finished the thought. 

Turning away a man in need. She would be so disappointed. 

But what did this man need?

Turned out that Ray didn't have to wait for an answer. He looked back at the folding chair and nodded before he mimed washing himself, rubbing his hands over his arms, then pointed hopefully to the house, pleading with his one good eye. 

So he was also mute. Ray actually started to feel a bit sorry for this man. Maybe he was just a homeless guy who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Didn't explain the clothes though...

Surely there'd be no harm in letting him get clean. Then maybe he'd be on his way. 

"Alright, fine. Do you need a hand?"

The man shook his head with a grimace, then planted his hand carefully on the cooler box, using it to lever himself to his feet. He was a lot taller than he'd looked crumpled on the ground, but still damn skinny. He took a step towards the door, only to stumble forwards. Ray dashed forwards to catch him by the shoulders, noticing the hiss of pain the man let out. 

"Here, I'll help you," Ray offered, ducking under his arm. Together, they hobbled awkwardly up the back steps into the house. 

The back door opened into the laundry which was luckily right next to the bathroom. After a lot of grunting and the other man tripping over the bathmat, Ray managed to lower him onto the edge of the bath. The man let out a sigh of relief, wrapping an arm around his stomach. 

In the bright daylight of the bathroom, Ray finally got a good look at the man.

It wasn't dirt coating his neck - they were bruises. No wonder he couldn't talk. 

"Are you okay with. . .?" Ray asked, gesturing to the bath. The man nodded. 

"Ok, I'll just get you a towel. Be right back."

Ray ducked out of the bathroom to pull a couple of old brown towels out of the cupboard. He opened the bathroom door to see the man's stark naked arse as he filled up the bathtub. Ray slammed the door shut again, only re-opening it far enough to feed the towels in. 

"Towels are near the door," Ray called through the gap before pulling it shut again. 

Give a guy some warning. Imagine if Allison had come home!

Still, in the flashing glimpse Ray had of the man's body bent over the bath, he saw a mark across his back that he'd seen too many times before. 

Baton marks. 

Maybe he was one of those peaceniks, caught up in some sort of protest. He hadn't heard anything about a protest, but it wasn't unlike the local police to hush that sort of thing up. 

Ray was sipping on a large brandy (it was quarter to four, a perfectly respectable time for a drink) when the man limped into the kitchen, one towel around his waist while the other was draped like a shawl over his shoulders. Peeking out under the shawl was some sort of Hare Krishna style tattoo. Most likely a peacenik then. His clothes were looped over his forearm. Ray jumped to his feet, not feeling overly comfortable with this man's flagrant tendency towards nudity. 

"I'll show you the spare room. You can get changed in there, then I can drop you off.."

The man wasn't listening to him at all. Instead he picked up the framed wedding picture that sat on the side table, smiling fondly. He held it at a strange angle away from himself, his smile stretching wider all of the sudden. 

"She's a stunner, isn't she?" 

The man nodded, staring at the picture. In the afternoon light, it almost looked like his eyes were a little teary. The other one had started to go down ever so slightly. The blood had been washed off to reveal high cheekbones, still heavily bruised. There was a nasty cut through his eyebrow which he had pitifully tried to stick a plaster over, almost completely obscured by his long hair.

He set the picture down and nodded. Ray took it to mean he was ready to get changed. 

Ray showed him to the tiny spare room upstairs. They were using it mainly for storage, Ray's old orange mattress from his college days propped up against one wall, a disused exercise bike in the other corner. Allison didn't have much in the way of belongings, which worked well in their small house, but that woman did have a lot of clothes and a sense of style to match. 

Ray stood awkwardly at the door as the man entered the room, dumping his clothes on the seat of the exercise bike. 

"I'll leave you to it then?" he said, closing the door before any other accidental nudity could occur. 

After sitting in the lounge on the edge of the armchair for almost twenty minutes, Ray decided to check on the man. He knocked loudly before cracking the door open. 

"Hey, are you ok in there?" he asked, peering around the edge of the door, ready to slam it shut again. 

The man was passed out on the mattress which he'd laid out on the floor, still only wearing the towel wound around his waist. The other towel had dropped to the floor. 

Ray noticed the silver glint of something next to the man's head, joined to his neck by a chain. Dogtags. 

He slowly bent down to read them. 

David Katz. This man was David Katz. Of course, he was a vet. That made some sense. They were never quite the same when they came back. He didn't quite look old enough for Korea, but he might have gone over young towards the end of the war. 

Ray noticed a military tattoo on the man's bicep. Definitely a soldier then. One with a bit of a wild streak if the tiger tattoo on his shoulder was any indication. He lay with his left arm held out awkwardly. His wrist was swollen tightly, pink and purple and most definitely painful. Ray gently lifted it to get a better look where the bruising clustered when a dark shape caught his eye. 

It took him a second to recognise the next tattoo, but once he did his breath caught in his throat. 

An umbrella encased in a thick circle. 

Exactly like Allison's. 

Ray’s breath caught in his throat as he stood back up. Allison had always been cagey whenever he had asked about the tattoo, always trying to cover it up when she could. She once played it off as some drunken mistake with an ex when she was younger (the tattoo was certainly worn out enough to be from her youth) but he never really believed her at the time. 

What if she did get it with her ex? Did that mean this man passed out on the mattress was that ex? Ray had thought the whole incident had been random, but their house was halfway down a street. Why would he have chosen _this_ house in particular?

Maybe the army is what split them up - he got deployed and they got separated. Was he here to rekindle their relationship?

Was he still in love with her? 

_The way he looked at their wedding photo_. . .

Ray was snapped out of his thoughts by the scratch of a key in the front door. He checked his watch realising that he’d lost track of time. Allison was home. 

He quickly ducked back out of the room and firmly closed the door, hoping that Allison would not have any reason to go into the spare room until he got a chance to kick the man out once and for all.

********

Allison dropped her handbag onto the hall table. 

“Ray, how did the interview go?” she called out, flipping through the mail she had collected on the way in. A telephone bill, a letter from their local shoe shop about a sale (not a random flyer, an actual addressed letter!), correspondence from Ray’s great aunt in Chicago. 

“Ray?” Allison calls out again absent mindedly, passing into the laundry to put her cardigan in the basket. She spilt mayonnaise on it at lunch time. On the way back, she noticed the bath mat was still on the ground. Would it kill the man to hang it up after his shower?

Allison picked up the bathmat, noticing that it was the bath that was wet, not the shower. Ray never took baths. She hung it up on the edge of the bath when she noticed something balled up under the vanity. She bent over to pull it out.

It was a silk women’s shirt, blue and tan stripes. A women’s shirt that wasn’t one of Allison’s. 

She took a deep breath. This didn’t mean anything. Ray would never be like that, but then the bath as well . . .

He’d been home alone most of the day. 

_Stop_ , she told herself. She just needed to _talk_ to Ray. Let him explain. 

She tucked the shirt into a small ball in her fist. God, what sort of woman would wear such a flimsy shirt?

“Raymond!”

She finally found him hurrying down the stairs, looking rattled. Did he look rattled, or was that just her paranoia. _Play it cool, Allison_.

She smiled sweetly at her husband, channelling her former profession.

“Hi honey, how did the interview go?”

“Er . . .interview?” he asked, eyebrows raised. He paused for a second before snapping back into it, shaking his head. “Oh of course. The interview. Waste of time. They were looking for a _particular_ kind of applicant,” he said darkly. 

Definitely rattled.

“Everything okay?” Allison asked, raising an eyebrow. 

Ray nodded, refusing eye contact. “Yeah, everything’s fine Sunshine. Why?”

Allison strides into the lounge, Ray following behind her. “I don’t know, you just seem . . .” she eyes the empty brandy glass on the table, looking back up at Ray deliberately. “Like something’s bothering you.”  
“Oh,” he said, picking up the glass hurriedly. “I was a bit bummed by the interview, naturally.” 

Allison nodded, wandering over to the drinks trolley in the lounge, dropping the shirt on the tray slyly before pouring herself a whiskey. Something was definitely going on here and she would be handling it in the most Hargreeves way possible. 

“Actually,” Ray started, tracing a finger over the back of the arm chair. “I was wondering about something earlier. Your tattoo on your arm, where did you say you get that again?”

Allison schooled her features into a sweet smile before turning around, sipping her whisky.

“It’s a silly story. I barely remember it.” 

Ray stepped forwards. Getting a good look at him, Allison noticed how disheveled he looked. HIs tie was loose around his neck, shirt sleeves rolled up. 

Like he had just gotten dressed rather quickly. 

“C’mon, you have to remember a tattoo,” Ray pressed carefully, taking another step forward. 

“Why do you ask?”

Ray shrugged, looking out the window. 

They were interrupted with a loud _clunk_ coming from upstairs. Allison locked eyes with Ray, raising her eyebrows. 

“What was that?” she asked, pressing her lips together in a tight smile. Ray’s eyes were wide in panic, darting to the roof then back to her.

“Errr…”

Allison reached behind her to pull out the silk shirt, dangling the offending item from one finger. 

“Anything to do with this blouse I found in the bathroom?”

Ray’s eyes widened further, shaking his head.

“No, no, Allison, you’ve got it all wrong . . .”

“Let’s just see how wrong I have it,” Allison huffed, striding past Ray towards the stairs. 

This woman was about to find out what happened when she messed with her man. 

“Honey,” 

Allison flashed him a look that actually stirred her dormant power. She pointed a manicured finger at her husband.

“Oh, I’m not finished with you yet either Raymond.”

She headed for the stairs. That _harlet_ was about to get her arse handed to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahaha I can't wait for the next bit!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super nervous about this chapter - I hope that it lives up to your expectations!

Ray ran ahead of his wife, darting past her to get on the narrow stairs first. He turned around on the landing, holding his arms out.

“Raymond!” Allison shouted, hands on her hips. God she looked beautiful, even when she was angry. She looked like a movie star in that yellow dress. 

“Wait, it isn’t like that -”

She narrowed her eyes, standing with an intimidating confidence that she had even when she hadn’t been able to talk. It was one of the first things he’d noticed when they had met in the salon two years ago.

“Raymond, you let me pass or so help me, you will regret it -”

She moved forwards, causing Ray to back up the last few steps.

“Who’s Dave Katz?” he blurted out, halting at the top of the stairs.

To Ray’s surprise, she looked utterly bewildered. He searched her eyes, looking for any sign of recognition, but found none.

“Dave _Katz_? I don’t know any Dave Katz.”

“Then why does he have the same tattoo as you?”

Allison’s eyes widened in disbelief as she looked down at her forearm. 

“This tattoo?” 

Ray rolled his eyes. “Unless you have another one that I don’t know about?” Ray was _very_ certain Allison didn’t have any other tattoos. A few scars, including that particularly nasty one on her throat, but definitely no other tattoos. 

“Who . . . who has this tattoo?” she asked, suddenly desperate, pointing at the faded umbrella. She suddenly scrunched up her nose. “And what the hell has it got to do with the woman you’re hiding up here?”

Ray actually laughed. “Oh Allison, there’s someone up here, but it ain’t no girl. If you don’t mind, you might be able to explain to me why I found your ex-boyfriend in the shed this morning.”

“WHAT?” Allison shouted, holding the balustrade for support. She shook her heard. “No, nuh-uh, this makes no sense.”

Allison pushed past Ray just as the door to the spare room opened. 

The man was standing in the doorway, wearing his tight black pants with buttons on the side and Ray’s old too-small Harvard jumper that was swimming on the man. He was leaning heavily on the frame, his other arm held awkwardly as if he was holding onto air. His long hair was a mess, sticking up on one side. 

“K . . .Klaus?” Allison breathed, holding her fingers over her mouth, eyes wide. The man flashed her a dazzling grin, his green eyes sparkling. He reached his arms out towards her, making grabby hands as best as he could with his injuries. 

“KLAUS! OH MY GOD! OH MY -” Allison threw herself into the man’s arms, pulling him tightly in a hug. The man hissed, biting down on his split lip but still wrapped his one good arm around her. Tears streaked down his wife’s face as she sobbed into the man’s hair. With her heels, they were the same height. 

“I thought you were dead,” she said into his ear, words thick through the tears. “ _I thought you were dead._ ” She sobbed, smiling in between each burst. 

Ray noticed how the man’s shoulders were shaking as he sunk into his wife’s arms. Allison stroked a hand over his head in a familiar soothing gesture. She pulled away from him, holding him by his shoulders, surveying the man at arms distance. 

“Oh, look at your hair!” she said, stroking a hand through it. He leaned into her touch, then raised his own hand to touch her hair, waggling his eyebrows jovially.

Curiosity was burning at him, but Ray knew he needed to be patient. Obviously this man (Klaus?) meant a lot to his wife, even if he was an ex. He just needed to give them a moment. Ray had never met anyone from Allison’s life - it was almost like she dropped out of the sky when she moved to Dallas. 

“Not that I’m complaining, but this is the quietest you have ever been,” she said to the man suspiciously. Klaus ducked his head, shrugging his shoulder in a way that almost looked like he was trying to push the high collar of the jumper further up his neck. 

“And your face, what happened?”

Klaus touched his tear streaked face with grazed fingers, smiling at Allison with a shrug. He tried to pull her into another hug but instead she tilted her head to the side in a gesture that Ray knew meant business. Klaus seemed to know that too from the way he shrunk into himself.

“C’mon Klaus, who did this to you?”

Ray cleared his throat, deciding that the moment was done. 

“I found him like this in the garden shed this morning. He’s taken a fair beating by the looks of it.” 

Ray reached out to the collar of Klaus’ jumper but the man jumped away wildly, swatting at Ray’s hand. He over balanced, only just managing to somehow find his feet before he crashed into the door frame. 

“Klaus!” Allison cried out, catching the man under the armpits and dragging him upright with surprising strength. He smiled sheepishly, patting Allison’s arm in thanks. 

“Klaus is it?” Ray asked, holding his hands out as he addressed the man again. Klaus nodded, wincing at the movement. “I’m not going to touch you again, but I think you need to show Allison why you can’t talk.”

Klaus shot him a sassy glare that was so reminiscent of Allison that they could have been related. 

“Klaus,” Allison warned, arms folded. Klaus rolled his eyes in a feat that was impressive given the swelling around his right eye and tugged on the collar of Ray’s jumper. 

Allison gasped, holding her hands to her mouth before rushing forward to get a better look at the dark bruising around Klaus’ throat. It had definitely gotten worse. 

Ray’s patience finally ran out.

“Allison, can we talk for a second?”

His wife turned around, tears still filling her eyes and smudging her makeup. “Yeah,” she said, looking back at Klaus sadly before following Ray further down the corridor. She seemed reluctant to let Klaus out of her sight, so Ray guessed they were going to be doing this here. 

He still couldn’t picture it - Allison going out with this man. Maybe he was different before the war? He’d heard seeing action could turn some people a little crazy. 

“Look, I know we have pasts, meeting later in life like we did, and that we’ve both had lovers before we met . . .”

Allison held her hands out, shaking her head.

“Whoa, whoa, he’s not my ex!” she said, spitting out the last word. 

Ray distinctly heard a smirk from further down the corridor. Can’t talk but can definitely eavesdrop. 

“He’s my _brother_.”

Ray leaned back, scrunching up his nose. He was all for the cause and not seeing the colour of people’s skin, but Klaus and Allison . . .

“Adopted. We’re both adopted,” Allison said, popping a hand on her hip. 

Well, they definitely had the same mannerisms. 

“Right . . well . . .”

They stood in an awkward silence until Allison gasped quietly, placing one hand on Ray’s shoulder. She closed her eyes, tipping her head back.

“Oh Ray, I’m so sorry. I thought . . . .”

Ray shook his head, taking both of Allison’s hands in his own. 

“It’s fine, I thought he was some ex lover back to win you over.”

Allison snorted in an exact echo of Klaus’ own snort from down the corridor. 

“Yeah, I think there’d be more chance of him being your ex-lover than mine,” Allison said, looking back over her shoulder at Klaus. He winked clumsily, making a finger gun at her. 

Ray’s eyebrows may have disappeared into his hairline. 

“How about I go make sandwiches?” he said, eager to get out of the conversation. “Let you guys catch up.” 

He virtually ran back to the stairs, ignoring Klaus’ lewd wink as he passed. He heard Allison chiding him playfully.

**********

Allison pulled her brother into another hug, unable to believe he was actually there.

“This is crazy! When did you get here?” she asked, holding his hand. He wriggled out of her grip, turning to his left with his head cocked to the side. 

He held up three fingers.

“Three days?” He shook his head. “Three weeks? Three months?” 

He shook his head sadly.

“Three _years_?” 

Klaus wobbled his hand, then nodded. He’d been here longer than Allison. 

“Oh Klaus. What happened?”

Klaus looked over the railing of the stairs, checking if the coast was clear. He tilted his head towards Allison and Ray’s room.

“Yeah, of course, go on.” 

Allison led her brother into the room, sitting on their bed. He shut the door behind them, but didn’t sit next to her. Instead he scrunched up his face, holding one hand in a fist (the other one was swollen like a balloon). 

“Klaus, what are you . . .”

His hands suddenly lit up with blue light that threaded its way up his veins. Allison gasped, reaching towards her brother when a blue light near the door caught her eye. The light quickly formed into the shape of a man. The shape of . . .

“BEN!” 

Allison launched off the bed, rushing towards her brother who she hadn’t seen since his brief appearance at the theatre. He looked older, the same age that they were. He smiled warmly.

“Hey sis.”

“Oh!” Allison cried, pulling another of her brothers who she thought she’d never see again into a hug. She didn’t even try to stop the tears flooding down her face. She was ugly crying, she knew that, but it didn’t matter. She dragged Klaus in by his jumper, drawing him into the group hug.

“Whoa, whoa, go gentle on ghost-boy over here,” Ben warned. Allison released the boys from the hug, worried eyes back on Klaus who was glaring pettily at Ben. 

She sat down on the bed, motioning for Klaus to join her. Ben dragged her bedroom chair forwards (he _dragged a chair_!) and sat in front of them, leaning forward. 

“What happened? Who did that to your neck?”

Klaus sighed, waving a hand at Ben to take over the conversation. 

“He ran into some trouble with the police.”

Allison frowned. “The police did this to you?”

Klaus nodded, looking down at his tattooed palms in his lap. 

“Are you . . . are you sober?” Allison didn’t want to think the worst of her brother, but she’d seen him crawl back into the Academy plenty of times high as a kite with a split lip of a black eye to go with it. 

Klaus paused, tipping his hand side to side.

“He’s been doing a lot better,” Ben interjected. “Still drinks a bit too much, but he hasn’t touched drugs since before the Apocalypse. He’s getting control of his powers too. I can touch things most of the time, and he can make me visible for short bursts too.” 

Klaus’ looked up at Allison hopefully. She took his fidgeting hands in her own. 

“That’s so good to hear Klaus. I mean, not about the alcohol, but that’s so much better.”

His smile brightened a bit. God, his face was a mess.

“So what happened with the cops.”

Klaus winced, looking back at Ben. Her ghostly blue brother sighed.

“Against advice,” he said pointedly, “Klaus followed a guy to a gay bar. In nineteen-sixty-three.”

Klaus shrugged, biting his split lip again.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. To be fair, we’d been in San Fran before hand which had been much more liberal, even for the sixties. Even for Texas, the angry mob with pitchforks was a surprise. Klaus put those Academy skills to use and fought them off, but the cops caught up with him.”

“They did this?” Allison gasped, pointing to Klaus’ face. Klaus turned away. 

“Called him the ‘Q’ word and everything, and not in a good way.” Ben put a hand on Klaus’ knee reassuringly. It warmed Allison’s heart to realise that all these years, Klaus had Ben by his side. They’d never been super close as kids, but it was obvious that they had seventeen years to bond. 

“He’s hiding the worst of it too,” Ben said in a low voice. Klaus hissed like a cat, pulling his knee up to his chest defensively. 

Allison turned on the bed, facing Klaus. “What’s he talking about Klaus?”

“Show her your back,” Ben said, ignoring Klaus’ pouting. “And that cut on your head. It looks infected.”

Allison didn’t wait for an invitation. She pushed back Klaus’ hair, revealing a sluggishly bleeding gash across his eyebrow that had soaked into his hairline. A bandaid was uselessly tacked over it.

“Oh Klaus, this needs cleaning. Show me your back.” 

Klaus rolled his eyes as he turned around, letting Allison ease up his jumper. Three long purple bruises ran along his bony back, raised and angry looking. Two were close together, one almost wrapped around his ribs. 

“Do they hurt?” Allison asked softly. Klaus pulled his jumper back down, shrugging.

“He can barely walk. I don’t think his ribs are cracked, but he’s coughing and wheezing like crazy.”

“Thanks Ben,” Allison said pointedly. “You’re going to stay here, okay?” she told Klaus firmly. “I’ll get Ray to arrange a doctor to look you over to make sure you’re alright.” 

Klaus crossed his legs, pouting. 

“Don’t give me that, I’m still your big sister.”

Klaus shook his head, pointing animatedly to Ben. Ben tilted his head and nodded.

“Actually, with the ten months in Vietnam plus the extra year that he’s been in the sixties, Klaus is actually two years older.”

“Hang on - Vietnam?”

And so Ben told Allison of Klaus’ trip to Vietnam, or what he knew of it anyway. It turned out that Ben hadn’t followed his brother back in time the first time, but he knew enough details to pull the story together.

“Can I tell her the rest?” Ben asked softly, big brown eyes searching Klaus’ green ones. Klaus nodded, dropping his head.

Allison learned who Dave Katz really was. She noticed Klaus’ fingers toying with the dog tags around his neck. 

Watching as her brother scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, Allison learned how he died. She gathered her brother into her arms, running her hand through his hair as he sobbed into her dress. 

“He must have been a pretty special guy to steal your heart.”

Klaus looked up at her through his messy hair, a fond smile on his lips. 

Allison turned to Ben, realising all at once . . .

“But nineteen-sixty-eight, that’s five years from now. Have you . . .?”

“We haven’t found him yet. Klaus thinks he might be moving to his uncle’s house in Dallas sometime this year thought.”

“We’ll help, Ray and I - we’ll help.”

Klaus nodded, sniffing. 

“I saw you yesterday.” Ben said suddenly. “At the salon. Klaus was drinking with that guy and I saw you sweeping the floors. I followed you home. We were meant to come and visit you today after he got over his hangover.”

Tears filled Allison’s eyes again. 

Klaus pointed to her, gesturing to the room around them.

“What about you?” Ben translated. “What have you been up to?”

“Well, I landed two years ago. Ran into some trouble soon as I landed and these nice women in a salon helped me. I work there now.”

Allison felt her cheeks blush. “That’s where I met Ray. We’ve been married just on a year.”

Klaus clapped his hands excitedly. 

Allison looked at both her brothers.

“I can’t believe you’re both here.” Allison had been sure she would never see her family again, but now, now there was hope. If Klaus had dropped out of the sky three years ago, and she had fallen into Dallas a year after that, maybe that’s what happened. Maybe they’re all here, but at different times. 

“And look at you,” she said to Klaus. “Using your powers.” He looked good, well, considering the obvious injuries, he had lost the gaunt skeletal look he had back in 2019. He was still far too skinny, something that Allison would try to rectify while he stayed with her.

“Speaking of which, you should probably take a rest,” Ben said, placing a hand on Klaus’ knee again. “You’re worn out and you know that your powers aren’t unlimited.”

Klaus nodded in defeat. Ben stood, giving Allison a hug. 

“See you soon, sis.”

“See you soon, too.”

Ben stepped back and waved, fading away as if he was never there at all. 

To stop herself from bursting back into tears, she leapt to her feet. 

“C’mon, let’s get some lunch. Ray should have finished with the sandwiches by now.”

Klaus waggled his eyebrows, taking Allison’s proffered arm. She noticed he was leaning on her quite heavily. 

“Hey, you keep your eyes off my husband.”

**********

Ray had seen Allison happy many times before. In fact, he made it his job to get his beautiful wife to smile as much as he could. 

He had never seen Allison’s face light up in the way it did that day, even through the tears in her eyes. She watched Klaus the whole time while they ate their dinner of sandwiches, asking him carefully thought out yes and no questions. They had tried a pen and paper, but Klaus’ left hand was too injured to hold the pen. 

Ray had always presumed that Allison had a falling out with her family. She mentioned once or twice that they lived up north. She never liked to talk about them, always shutting down and locking herself into the bedroom to cry for hours. Now it seemed like maybe she just lost them. 

Klaus was an unusual man. He was like no man that Ray had ever met. All long languid gestures and lounging movements made Ray wonder where Allison and Klaus had grown up. Folks around here would never have accepted a man behave like him. Allison had already alluded to the fact that Klaus may have been attracted to men - which while Ray knew wasn’t unheard of - was definitely something that one kept hidden, especially in Dallas.

Suddenly the police beating was making more sense. Folks around here didn’t like those that were different from the mould, and Klaus seemed to break the mould into tiny pieces. 

As much as it pained him to admit, having Klaus in their home was dangerous, especially with his and Allison’s involvement in the cause, but watching his darling wife’s face light up as Klaus danced in his seat, shimmying his tattooed hands, there was no way that he’d take that away from her. 

“So I guess I’ll have to wait for your throat to heal to find out all the embarrassing stories from when Allison was a kid.”

Klaus nodded, propping his head up on his hand. He was starting to look tired.

“Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to tell stories about you!” Allison leaned in, conspiratorial. “Klaus was always a bit of a handful. Do you remember that time when we were like twelve or thirteen and you cut all of Diego’s underwear into g-strings?” Allison recalled, laughing.

Klaus smiled lazily at his sister. 

“He was picking at them the whole of training!”

Ray chuckled, joining his wife’s infectious laughter. He made a note to ask her about the training later. Maybe they were really into their sports? He looked over at Klaus.

Allison’s brother wasn’t smiling anymore. His skin had drained of all colour, fading to the ashy hue of the lino. A fine sheet of sweat had started to bead on his forehead.

“Klaus -” Ray interrupted, leaning out of his chair. Klaus’ glazed-over eyes flickered to his before rolling back into his head. Ray only just caught his shoulders in time as he dropped sideways out of his chair.

“Klaus!” Allison shouted, running around the table to where Ray had laid him out on the floor. He was trembling with the shakes. Allison pressed two fingers to his neck. 

“His pulse is too slow.” She placed her palm against his forehead, feeling for his temperature. Ray slid his hand under Klaus’ jumper, taking his own measure.

“He doesn’t feel that warm,” Ray said, confused. He was sweating like a man with a fever.

“He does for him. Klaus always runs really cold.” Allison looked up. “It’s, um, er, a medical condition.”

“I’ll take him upstairs. Call Doctor Groen.” They usually used Doctor Yates, but everyone used Doctor Yates and he was known to be a bit of a gossip. What Doctor Groen lacked in bedside manner he made up for in discretion. 

Allison nodded, looking over Klaus once again before heading to the phone in the hallway.

Ray scooped Klaus’ limp body in his arms. He was gangly and tall, but he wasn’t heavy, not nearly enough for a fully grown man. Klaus tried to lift his head, instead moaning and lifting a floppy arm towards his neck.

He carried Klaus up the stairs, going straight to their bedroom. A sick man shouldn’t be on a mattress on the floor. He laid Klaus on the bed spread. As Ray pulled the covers back on the other side of the bed, he curled in on himself, groaning. Ray carefully maneuvered him over to the other side. 

Allison burst into the room, puffing like she had run up the stairs. “He’s on his way. How is he?”

Ray shrugged. “We should probably get him changed and under the covers. I don’t know whether to keep him warm or cool him down.”

Together, they changed Klaus into one of Ray’s soft short-sleeved undershirts and a pair of light cotton shorts. Ray had offered to take over, but Allison had assured him that she’d seen Klaus’ bare arse enough times over the years. After his exhibition earlier that day, he could believe that.

Allison sat on the other side of the bed, stroking Klaus’ hair while Ray went back down stairs, waiting to let the doctor in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awww, Ben!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus recovers and gets pampered like the cinnamon roll he is. Bonding time with Klaus and Allison and the incident at the salon goes a little differently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so I was going to post this tomorrow but you have all been so lovely with your kudos and comments that I thought why not post it now? 
> 
> This chapter is pretty sweet but I've written the next chapter and it's not pretty. Might need to change some of those tags . . .

Klaus was warm, too warm. Something icy cold touched his chest. Cold like a ghost. He flinched away, pain jolting up his spine.

“Stay still,” a man’s voice warned. 

His arm brushed against his chest. His bare chest. Where were his clothes? Who was this man? 

Klaus tried to open his eyes, but the shapes he saw were blurry. Why did everything hurt?

Where was Ben? 

A hand closed around his wrist. 

No, no, no - he didn’t do this anymore, he didn’t want this . . .

He pushed his hands out, making contact with a body. Klaus tried to call out, but all that happened was his throat burned like it was on fire. 

His vision started to focus on a man leaning over him, pressing down on his shoulder. Klaus swung out his left arm, crying out as pain ripped through his wrist, then through his throat again. 

“Klaus! Shhh, you’re okay, you’re safe.”

 _Allison_?

Klaus let his head drop towards her voice. His sister’s face came into view.

“He’s a doctor - you’re not well Klaus. He’s just here to help.” 

Klaus rolled his head back the other way. It felt so heavy. 

The man had a stethoscope in his ears and a stern expression. He reminded Klaus of a gruff Pogo. Was he in a hospital? He tried to sit up, but his back protested at the movement.

“You’re in Allison’s room, in her house. Dallas, 1963.” Ben. Ben was here. 

That’s right. He and Ben and Allison and Ray. 

Klaus couldn’t turn to see his ghost brother, but knowing he was there was reassuring. He sounded calm, and if Ben was calm, it meant everything was fine. 

“I need to listen to his chest,” the doctor declared, pressing the stethoscope against Klaus’ sticky skin. He shivered, feeling too hot and yet too cold at the same time. Hands rolled him onto his side and the cold metal touched against his back. He was facing Allison who was kneeling on the bed, smiling sadly. She brushed his hair back from his face. 

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “You passed out earlier. Doctor Groen is seeing what’s wrong.”

Klaus relaxed slightly, then jolted as fingers pressed into his back. He saw Allison shoot a deathly glare over his shoulder. 

“I need to check for broken ribs,” the doctor said unapologetically. 

Klaus winced as the fingers probed at his back, then pressed into his side. Allison took his _hello_ hand, squeezing it tightly. His body felt so heavy that he felt like he might sink through the bed. He thought he was feeling alright, he’s had his arse kicked many times before, but to be fair those cops had really gone to town on him, and if was being honest, he had felt a little woozy all day. Manifesting Ben for that long probably wasn’t the wisest idea either, but when did making good decisions ever matter?

Allison helped gently roll him onto his back, adjusting the pillow under his head. The doctor dropped his heavy bag on the bed next to Klaus’ elbow, making the bed bounce uncomfortably. 

“There’s movement in the floating ribs, especially on the right. The left wrist is most likely fractured, without an x-ray a conclusion cannot be drawn, but the treatment is similar either way. The ankle is sprained, but not badly. The head wound will be stitched, and he will need a round of antibiotics. Painkillers as well.”

Allison sat up. “Er, if Klaus has, say, had some _issues_ in the past . . . with certain drugs . . ”

The doctor sighed, digging through his bag. He slapped a canister on the bedside table. 

“Paracetamol. Two every six hours.”

Klaus rolled his eyes. That wasn’t going to even touch the pain pulsing through him. He knew that the alternative wasn’t an option. Silently he was grateful for Allison’s intervention. 

“What about his neck?”

Oh, Ray was in the room. He’d only known the man a few hours, but already he felt safe around him. 

“Nothing can be done. No permanent damage from what I can see, but he’ll need to rest his voice for another week at least.”

Klaus dropped his hands against the blanket in resignation. Ben, the bitch, laughed. 

“Woah-ho, did you hear that Klaus? One whole week that I don’t have to hear your incessant whining!” 

Klaus fired a glare at his brother sitting in the chair. 

Considering Klaus wasn’t even getting any good painkillers at the end of this, the doctor could have at least been gentle. The only consolation is that he was quick. He bandaged Klaus’ ankle faster than any field medic back in ‘Nam and splinted his arm before he even had a chance to try and scream. 

Then he started threading the needle. Klaus exchanged a look with Allison who squeezed his hand tighter. 

“Lucky Diego isn’t here,” Ben smirked. “Remember last time?”

Klaus let out a scoff, glancing over to Ben. 

“Ben making jokes,” Allison mumbled into his ear. Klaus dreamily smiled up at her.

Then the doctor stabbed the needle through his eyebrow.

*********

Allison looked over her brother once more. He had fallen asleep again almost as soon as the doctor had left, lips slightly parted, settled on his side to relieve his back. He had a bit more colour in his face, but his cheeks were still flushed pink with fever. The offending cut that had led to the infection was now stitched and cleaned and covered with a bandage. Klaus always had a terrible immune system, but the sixties meant different bugs. She herself had spent the first few months catching cold after cold after cold. 

Allison moved to the door, looking back over her shoulder.

“Take care of him, Ben.”

Allison found Ray at the kitchen sink, washing the dinner dishes that had been abandoned earlier in the evening. She looked at the clock. Quarter past midnight.

Standing behind him, she rested her head on Ray’s shoulder, threading her arms around his middle. She felt his jaw move as he smiled, placing a kiss to her cheek. 

He placed the last plate in the dishrack and dried his hands on a teatowel. Allison turned him around, pressing a kiss to her husband’s lips. 

“Thank you,” she said. Ray smiled. 

“What for?”

“Everything. For taking care of Klaus, even before you knew he was my brother. For letting him stay. For being so good about it all.”

Ray led her to the lounge, sitting on the couch and pulling her half onto his lap. 

“You don’t talk much about your family,” Ray said, smoothing out the folds in Allison’s dress. 

He was right. At first, it had been too painful. She thought they were all dead, or worse, that they were all together and she had been abandoned on her own. Now, with Klaus here, maybe the others . . .

Then there was the issue of how to possibly explain seven superpowered siblings who had been adopted by a billionaire to be used as an experiment which left nothing but six emotionally stunted adults. 

“It’s . . . complicated.” 

Ray sighed. He was right, she owed him more than that. 

“So there’s seven of us - one sister and five brothers.” 

Ray raised his eyebrows, but refrained from commenting. 

“We’re all _technically_ the same age, well, except for Five. He’s like an old man stuck in a teenager’s body.”

“Five?” Ray asked incredulously.

“Errr. . . yeah,” Allison said slowly. “Our dad kinda gave us numbers.”

“ _Numbers_?” 

“Yeah . . . we got names later.” She quickly continued, not sure how to explain Reginald treating his children more like soldiers than kids. “So there’s Luther. He’s like the big brother. Then there’s Diego, who wishes he was the big brother, but he’s really just a big baby. I guess I’m next, then the other three were always like the youngest. Klaus, who’s, well . .” Allison smirked, waving her hand. “You’ve met him.”

Ray chuckled, nodding.

“Then there’s Vanya. She’s a musician - the violin. And then . . Ben.” Allison looks down at her lap. “He died.”

Ray wraps his arms around her tighter. “Oh honey, I’m sorry.”

Allison leans her head against his cheek. “It’s okay.”

Ben might have been dead, but only a few hours ago Allison found out that he wasn’t gone. She didn’t want to get her hopes up after the theatre, after all, there had been no time to talk. What if it was just a shell of her brother? But after chatting to him upstairs in her bedroom, she realised that Klaus’ powers actually allowed Ben to live on, in a different form. While he’d obviously developed more sass to his personality (no surprise if he had been following Klaus around for years), he was definitely their Ben. 

“C’mon, let’s get some sleep,” Ray said, tapping her knee. “I’ll stay here on the couch. You go watch your brother.”

Allison nodded, realising that her brother was passed out in their bed. 

“Thank you.” 

She kissed Ray goodnight and headed upstairs.

*********

Klaus woke up the next day to a light filled room smelling of patchouli and honey. An arm was looped over him. He rolled over to find his sister curled up in bed next to him, fast asleep.

“How are you feeling?” 

Ben was still in his chair, reading a book. He slid a bookmark into the pages, then placed it back on the bedside table. Klaus squinted to see it said something about the moon. He tried to wriggle into a better position as the dull ache started to seep back into his bones, letting out a groan as a particularly sharp jolt of pain shot up his back. 

“That good, huh?”

There was a rhythmic tapping coming from somewhere else in the house. Klaus lifted his chin, looking towards the door. Ben smirked knowingly. 

“Ray’s putting together his old bed for you to sleep in. He’s clearing out the spare room.”

Klaus couldn’t stop the smile that spread over his face. It was so warming to know that Allison had nabbed herself a good man. 

Allison stirred next to him. He tried to roll over to face her as gently as he could. She smiled sleepily at him, tapping her finger on his nose. 

“How are you feeling today?” she asked. Klaus gave her a thumbs up.

“Liar.”

She propped herself up on an elbow. She was wearing a flouncy pastel yellow night dress. Klaus smirked, eying the lace around the sleeves.

“What?” Allison said, playfully scowling at him. “It’s what people wear around here.”

He pointed to himself.

“Oh no, you are not trying it on. You’d give Ray a heart attack.”

Klaus grinned, trying not to laugh and aggravate his throat. Allison’s bloody mom instincts must have kicked in because she noticed.

“Let me have a look,” Allison said, shifting the sheets to get a view of his neck. Her eyes darkened as she surveyed the damage.

“You scared me yesterday. One minute you were fine, and the next thing you weren’t.” 

Klaus bit his lip, unable to communicate his thoughts to Allison. He looked over to Ben who was now sitting on the window sill behind her. He wasn’t too sure what happened either, but it had probably been connected to his powers.

Ben offered an explanation.

“I think it’s because your powers use up your energy, but your body needs energy to fight off the infection and heal from your wounds, so when you me visible for that long yesterday, it completely sapped all the energy your body needed.”

Klaus nodded thoughtfully. It made sense.

“Ben’s here?” Allison asked, looking over her shoulder. Klaus nodded, pointing to the window. Allison had been so happy to see him again yesterday.

Klaus balled his unsplinted hand into a fist, closing his eyes.

“Whoa whoa!” Allison shouted right at the same time that Ben said, “Hey dipshit, what do you think you’re doing?”

Allison pulled his hand back down to the bed. “Klaus, you haven’t got the energy for that right now.”

“I literally just told you that you can’t use your powers when you’re healing,” Ben scolded, shaking his head.

Klaus pointed between Allison and Ben earnestly. His sister smiled.

“I can talk to him another time, when you’re feeling better. If he’s stuck around you for this many years, he’s not going anywhere.”

“Finally, someone else to talk sense into you,” his ghostly brother added, throwing his hands in the air. 

“Let’s go downstairs and have some breakfast.”

Not long later, Klaus found himself sitting at the kitchen table wrapped in a maroon velvet dressing gown with black lapels that he loved enough to not complain about Allison not letting him wear her silk one. Allison was at the stove making pancakes while Ray poured Klaus a coffee. He was dressed in a suit, his jacket hung over the back of his chair. 

Klaus noticed that Allison had laid out the two paracetamol next to his glass with the smaller antibiotic. She had taken control of the canister as soon as the doctor had left. 

He had to admit, the infection was really knocking him about. Hopefully the medication would start to do their job soon, and if he took it easy with his powers, he’d be able to put his own energy into recovering if any of what Ben said was right. 

“Sorry, we don’t have any blueberries so no smiley faces,” Allison teased, setting a plate in front of Klaus. He smiled, pouring a liberal amount of syrup over his cakes as she served Ray and herself. 

“Would you like me to . . .” Ray asked, holding up a knife and fork. Oh right, he was down to one hand. Klaus nodded, letting Ray cut up his pancakes. 

Once they started eating, Klaus pointed to Allison and mimed cutting his hair.

“I’m not working today,” Allison said. “I called in sick.”

Klaus rolled his eyes.

“Don’t give me that, someone has to make sure you stay out of trouble. Besides, don’t you want to spend the day with your sister?” 

They spent the morning playing cards, Klaus bundled up in a blanket on the couch. When he won his fourth game of Old Maid in a row, Allison finally cottoned on that he was using Ben to cheat. She pulled out Monopoly instead, reasoning that it would be harder for the pair of them to cheat. After they had tuna salad for lunch, Klaus curled up on the couch, his head resting on Allison’s lap while they both read magazines, her hand absently playing with his hair. They barely spoke, considering Klaus couldn’t respond, but it was the most connected he’d probably ever felt to Allison, since they’d been kids anyway.

At some point in the afternoon he dozed off, sleeping in the afternoon sun that filtered through the yellow curtains. He slipped in and out of his nap, the light from the window darkening each time.

“Klaus?” 

His sister gently shook him awake. The room was dark, only lit up by two lamps. She was dressed in a smart pair of fitted pants with a shirt, obviously ready to go out somewhere.

“How are you feeling?” Allison asked, holding a hand to his forehead. Klaus ducked away, sending her a look. 

“Do you want something to eat? You missed dinner.”  
Klaus shook his head. He really wasn’t hungry. She nodded.

“We have a meeting tonight - for the SJCC.”

Klaus gave her a puzzled look. 

“It’s a non-violent civil rights group that Ray runs. I’d miss the meeting, but we are planning a sit in tomorrow.”

Klaus pointed to himself, then to the door.

“You want to come?” His sister looked over to Ray, who was adjusting his tie. 

“I don’t know how some of the folks might feel about a white boy being there.”

“But he’s my brother,” Allison protested. Ray put a hand up to calm her.

“I know, but you can’t blame people for feeling on edge.”

“I don’t want to leave him here on his own though. He’s still feeling a bit warm.”

Klaus ended up tagging along to the meeting. Allison rugged him up in one of Ray’s sheepskin jackets which he was _absolutely_ keeping and one of her orange scarves. He fell asleep in the car on the way, lulled by the rumbling owl engine. 

They pulled up with the loud creak of the handbrake.

“Now, I’ll go in first and explain, then you can take Klaus through to the back,” Ray said, stepping out of the car.

A few moments later, he stuck his head out the door and gave them a nod.

Klaus’ eyes lit up as soon as he walked into the salon. It was everything he had hoped a sixties salon would be. The mint green chairs, the mis-matched lino tiles, even those old style hair dryers that you put over your head. It was beautiful.

Gathered in the middle on folding chairs were around ten people, all looking around his and Allison’s age, apart from a couple who were a little older. All their eyes were focused on him. Klaus gave a little wave, pulling his scarf up around his neck further. 

“Thanks everyone, sorry for doing this,” Allison said, ushering him up the back behind the beaded curtain. She guided him towards an old reclining chair that must have been attached to a wash basin at some point. Klaus curled up on the chair, accepting the blanket that she handed him. 

“Try and get some rest,” she said, rubbing her thumb under his eye. The swelling had gone down some more, but now he looked like a drag queen with how dark the bruising was.

Allison headed back out to the main area. Klaus picked up a magazine from the shelf, leafing through while lying on his side.

He heard the beaded curtain tinkle open.

A woman with perfectly styled black curls and a magenta dress stopped in front of him.

“So you’re Allison’s brother?” 

He nodded, giving her a wave with his _hello_ hand. 

“I’m Odessa. I run this salon.”

Klaus nodded, unable to tell her how beautiful he thought it was. 

“Cat got your tongue?” 

Klaus pulled down the scarf, showing the woman his neck. She clicked her tongue.

“What is it with your family and neck injuries?” She muttered to herself as she bustled out of sight before returning moments later with a steaming hot mug.

“Honey and herbal tea. It’s good for the throat. Your Allison lived on that for months.”

Klaus smiled gratefully, accepting the mug. He took a sip, closing his eyes. It soothed his throat instantly.

“It’s good, isn’t it? My momma’s recipe.” She opened a biscuit tin and placed it on the shelf next to him. 

“Help yourself. You look like you need feeding up.”

Klaus sat happily snacking on the butter biscuits and sipping his tea while he flicked through the magazines. He couldn’t quite catch what was being said in the meeting in the main salon, but it got heated at some points. It seemed like Ray and Allison were the leaders. He smiled, watching her command the room. Maybe things would have been different had her number been One instead of Three.

Ben was perched on the nail station bench, watching intently. 

There was a loud knock on the front door that made Klaus jump. Allison answered it. Klaus peered through the curtain to see what was going on.   
Ray joined Allison at the door. They seemed to be arguing with a man. Klaus pushed himself out of the chair, passing through the curtain. 

A smug man was at the door, questioning Allison and Ray about the meeting.

“I own some of the other properties in the street,” he bragged. “ . . and I like a quiet neighbourhood.”

“But you don’t own this one.”

They kept arguing as Klaus passed through the circle. The SJCC members were all standing, watching the goings on. Klaus could feel the fear thick in the room.

The man looked past Allison, taking in all the people standing around. His eyes locked on Klaus.

“He’s not a woman. Or black.” 

Allison shifted to block Klaus from his view. Klaus noticed that Ben was stalking closer, eyes fixed on the hateful man. He turned to Klaus.

“Sorry, I need to drain some power,” he said apologetically. “I’ll try not to take too much.”

Klaus nodded. He had no idea what Ben was planning, but he was starting to get a sick feeling in his stomach watching the scene unfold.

Ray pushed the shop door shut, but instead it slammed on the man’s foot. He shoved the door back open, yelling angry words. 

He raised his hand at Allison. 

Klaus tried to shout, letting out a strangled noise as he rushed forwards. 

Just at that moment, there was a loud bang punctuated with shattering glass. The man spun around. Ray pulled Allison back into the shop and slammed the door, panting heavily. Klaus ran to the window to look into the street, pushing aside the curtain, as did Odessa. 

The man was running down the street towards one of his shops that he’d pointed to earlier, shouting at anyone and everyone who was in the vicinity. A brand new Cadillac was smashed through the window front, like someone had forgotten to put the brake on . . .

“Ha, how’s that for karma,” Odessa chuckled. 

Klaus felt Ben reappear at his side. He gave his brother a quirky smile. Ben rolled his eyes, but he was smiling too. 

“What? No-one got hurt.”

Klaus shrugged in agreeance. That’s when it started to hit, the sweeping nausea that had him clutching his stomach. He scrambled into one of the salon chairs just in time, turning it away so he was facing into the corner. He didn’t want to vomit in front of all these nice people, but he wasn’t sure he was getting a choice.

“Klaus!” 

Allison was bobbed down in front of him, hands on his knees. He clamped a hand over his mouth, signaling to Allison for a bucket or a bowl or _something_. Odessa nudged his sister aside, thrusting a bin between his knees just as he couldn’t hold back any more. He threw up in the bin, coughing and spluttering as the acid burned his already sore throat.

“Shit Klaus,” Ben said sympathetically. 

Luckily the wave of nausea was over as quickly as it had started. He went to wipe his mouth with his hand when Odessa passed him a towel. He smiled weakly at her, wiping his face. Allison was holding his hair back. 

“I think that’s enough excitement for one night,” Odessa declared.

Ray and one of his friends helped Klaus into the car. He sat in the back with the plastic bin and a jar of Odessa’s momma’s tea for Allison to heat up for him back home. He was actually feeling better by the time they reached the house and managed to get up the stairs to the spare room without much help (although Allison followed close behind him the whole way up the stairs). After brushing his teeth he changed into some of Ray’s old pyjamas and slumped on the bed.

“Are you okay?” Ben asked, sitting on the exercise bike. Klaus nodded. 

Allison appeared at the door, holding a steaming mug of tea and a small cup which he assumed must have his pills. Klaus’ face lit up at the sight of the sweet nectar. His throat was burning. 

He took the tea and downed the tablets while his sister closed the door and sat on the end of the bed.

“So, I’m guessing that the accident tonight wasn’t so much of an accident?”

Klaus shrugged innocently, looking at the roof while sipping his tea.

“Wow, Ben has become much more a delinquent since we were teenagers,” she teased.

“Hey, I saved you!” Ben said. Klaus chuckled into his tea.

“Well, if you’re here Ben, thank you.” She sighed. “Honestly, thank you,” she added seriously. 

“You’re welcome,” Ben replied. Klaus pointed to the exercise bike with his mug to show Allison that he was listening. 

“So, do you always get sick when you use your powers?”

Klaus shook his head. He put his mug down on the wooden stool next to the bed that served as a bedside table, complete with a lamp (honestly, that Ray thought of everything) and mimed using his powers, scrunching up his face and fist, then smiled animatedly. Then, Klaus did the same thing, but pointed to his injuries, his neck, his head, his arm and made an exaggerated sad face.

Allison shook her head with a smile. “Okay, so from what you’re saying, or not saying, usually you can use your powers just fine, but when you’re already not well, it makes you worse?” Klaus quirked his lip and nodded. It would do until he could make Ben visible again to explain properly about the energy and stuff. 

“Well, get some sleep. Ray and I will be out tomorrow so you’ll have the house to yourself. Do you think you’ll be okay?”

Klaus nodded. Allison pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“Goodnight.”

He blew her a kiss in return. She flicked off the light, the lamp washing a warm orange light over the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get ready for a rough ride in Chapter 5


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And things had been going so well. . .
> 
> The sit in and the aftermath
> 
> Klaus finds Dave . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? Another update?
> 
> I've written Chapter 6 and so I wanted to get through the not so mushy stuff in this chapter so we can return to the bonding in the next.
> 
> Make sure you've read the tags - there's nothing too graphic maybe just some icky feels. I dunno, whenever I watch any movies or docos about this time period and the way things were in some places it gives me the shivers. 
> 
> Lastly, thanks for all the beautiful comments!

Breakfast was a tense affair the next morning. It was the day of the sit-in that the SJCC had spent weeks planning. Klaus wanted to tell his sister how proud he was of her for taking a stand, especially given that she knew how this turned out. All the other folks were still full of hope for change, expecting to see equal rights in their lifetimes. 

Allison knew for a fact that this was going to be a long road, a road that didn’t finish in 2019. Yet, here she was, dressed impeccably in her orange dress, ready to take a stand. 

He wished he could speak.

Ray adjusted his tie for the sixth time that morning, tipping his untouched toast into the bin. 

“C’mon honey, we better go,” he said, resting a hand on Allison’s shoulder. She nodded, standing up with a nod. 

She turned to Klaus. “Make sure you rest up today. There’s chicken in the fridge, and bread, and a bit more of Odessa’s tea on the bench there . . .” She rambled on absentmindedly. Klaus nodded. He didn’t think he’d be getting much sleep that day. 

She smiled tightly at Klaus, then picked up her cardigan to meet Ray at the door. 

Klaus followed after her, his insides feeling like a pit of snakes. At the door, he tapped his sister on the shoulder. As she turned around, he wrapped her in a tight hug. She felt her squeeze him back.

_Be careful. Keep safe._

Ray cleared his throat. They had to go, Klaus knew timing was important. He let Allison go, his hand trailing on her arm until she was out of reach. She looked back at him as Ray closed the front door, giving Klaus a right nod.

Klaus turned to Ben who watched from the living room. 

“I’ll go watch them,” he said, fading away. 

Klaus let out a sigh of relief, knowing at least Ben was looking out for their sister. 

Klaus spent the day curled up on the couch, unable to find the motivation to even flick through the magazines on the bottom shelf of the coffee table. As ill as he was feeling thinking about the sit-in, he was actually feeling a lot better. He supposed that actually resting his body was doing wonders for his immune system and being able to fight off the infection. His back was still pretty sore and his wrist would be stuck in the splint for at least a few more weeks, but otherwise he was feeling much more like himself.

He awoke later that night to the sound of the front door slamming and Allison’s raised voice. They were still in the hallway.

“What does it matter what I said?”

“It matters because no white cop listens to a black woman.”

Oh _shit_. Klaus looked up at Ben who had followed them inside. His brother sighed, slumping into an armchair. Klaus gestured to him imploringly. 

“Things got nasty. A cop was beating the absolute shit out of Ray, so Allison rumoured him.”

Klaus winced. He knew Allison hated using her powers almost as much as he had before he started to get some control over them. They still gave him trouble, there were still ghosts who burst through, but he could generally manage it with alcohol these days. 

How was she going to explain it to Ray?

“It’s pretty convenient if you ask me,” Ray said, the sound of his keys tinkling in the key bowl punctuating his words. “Too convenient. You turn up right when we start to get somewhere, right when Kennedy might be listening.”

“Whoa, what are you saying Ray?” Allison fired back. He looked at Ben, feeling like two kids listening to their parents fight, or how he might imagine it would feel. Grace never had the chance to disagree with Reginald.

“I’m saying there’s a lot of people who want to put a stop to what we are doing, and you just appeared out of nowhere. . . “

“So what? You think I’m a spy? You think I actually support the racists who think they can tell me where I can and can’t have a cup of coffee? Where I can sit on a bus? Where I can go to the toilet?”

Allison stormed into the lounge, noticing Klaus for the first time. She looked at him apologetically, about to say something, but instead ran a hand over her face and stormed into the kitchen. He could hear Ray stomp up the stairs. 

Klaus sat alone in the lounge for a moment when there was a loud banging on the front door. He stood up, exchanging a glance with Ben. 

“I’ll go check,” Ben said, disappearing. Klaus moved to the corridor, peering through the lace curtain over the glass.

Ben reappeared in the lounge, looking desperately for his brother.

“Klaus, get away from the door!” he shouted just as a loud bang made him jump back. The door swung open, revealing two cops who had just kicked it in. Klaus backed away quickly, his skin crawling at the memory of his last encounter. 

The first cop in the house raised a handgun in Klaus’ face.

“Where’s Raymond Chestnut?” he shouted, both hands on the gun.

Klaus shook his head, backing away. He tucked his right hand behind him, trying to hide his tattoos that were hidden by the splint on his other hand. 

Another cop followed in behind him, heading into the lounge. Towards the kitchen.

Klaus looked at Ben, eyes wide. Ben hesitated, desperately looking between Klaus and the kitchen, torn between his two siblings. 

Two more cops streamed into the house, batons in their hands. Klaus tried not to react as he recognised the bigger one as the cop that had belted him the other night. He looked down, backing into the wall.

They only had eyes for Ray though. They pushed past Klaus, opening the doors to the bathroom and laundry around the back. Klaus ducked his head, not wanting to be recognised by that thug. 

Klaus heard Allison shouting from the living room.

“Under what charge? What has he done wrong?”

“Starting a riot,” the cop snarled, pushing Allison towards the door. She grabbed the doorway between the corridor and living room to steady herself, sneering at the cop.

Then she spotted Klaus, backed up against the wall with a gun in his face.

“Get away from him!” Allison roared, lunging for the cop with the gun. The other cop who had shoved her roughly grabbed her from behind, dragging her back. 

Klaus tried to yell, reaching out to his sister. The gun was pressed into his chest, the cop holding it growling at him. Klaus held his hands up, backing up again. 

Ben was standing behind the cop, teeth bared and fists balled. Klaus shook his head ever so slightly. They couldn’t afford for Ben to lose control here. 

The sound of skin hitting skin sounded behind Klaus. He turned around to see Ray being dragged down the stairs by the two cops. He quickly ducked his head, hiding his hands again. The cop with the gun wasn’t pressing it into Klaus’ chest anymore, distracted with the commotion. 

Klaus saw that they had cuffed Ray. His head was bleeding as they pushed him through the narrow space of the corridor. Klaus pressed up against the wall to let them pass. They knocked the hall table over, the vase spilling water and flowers out onto the carpet near his feet. He looked at Ben desperately.

“We can’t do anything Klaus,” he said, eyes wide. “We can’t do anything.”

He was right. They were helpless. 

Allison hadn’t gotten the message. She maneuvered her way out of the cop’s grip and blocked the front doorway.

“You can’t do this, you can’t take him! He hasn’t done anything wrong!”

“Move, or we’ll make you,” the big cop from the other night threatened, still holding Ray’s shoulder. 

“Allison!” She locked eyes with her husband who was still suspended between the two officers. “Dignity and honour.”

Allison shook her head, swallowing like it was a bitter pill before nodding and stepping back to the doorway of the living room. 

“Dignity and honour,” she repeated, staring intently at her husband. Ray relaxed, letting the cops continue to pull him towards the door. 

“Hey, Gordon, didn’t you say something about a nancy-boy with tattoos that you gave a walloping the other night?” the cop that had been holding Allison asked, eyeing the thick splint on Klaus’ arm.

“Yeah, you said he got away,” the cop with the gun added, using the barrel of the gun to push aside Klaus’ long hair and reveal his black eye. 

The big cop turned back. 

Klaus ducked his head.

“Yeah, I reckon that’s him. Check his hands, he had words on them.”

“Shit Klaus,” Ben panicked from next to Allison. “Shit!”

“Hey now, you’re here for me. Leave the boy alone,” Ray called out from his restrained position in the doorway just as Allison started fighting to get past her cop. 

“Don’t you touch him!” She threatened, eyes wild. The cop with the gun roughly pulled Klaus’ right wrist forward, pushing up his sleeve. The _hello_ peeked out incriminatingly from underneath. 

“Shit, would you look at that?” the cop smiled, dragging Klaus forward. “I think we bagged ourselves a queer too.”

The other cops laughed as Klaus was roughly pushed face first against the wallpaper. A photo frame fell off the wall, shattering on the ground. 

Klaus let the shouts of Allison and Ben wash over him as the cop cuffed his one hand, not able to get the other side over his firmly splinted wrist. Instead, he cuffed the other side just above Klaus’ elbow where the splint finished, retching his right arm up his back. The metal dug sharply into his skin, not designed to be used that high on his arm. 

“Nice,” one of the other cops commented, grabbing Klaus by the back of his shirt and shoving him towards the door. With his hands so awkwardly restrained, Klaus lost his balance, stumbling face first out the door.

Just as his chin was about to make contact with the concrete steps, something buffered the blow. Klaus opened his eyes to see Ben had braced his arms under his face just in time. 

“I’ll get you out,” Ben promised, deep brown eyes searching his own. “Just keep your head down and I’ll get you out.”

Klaus nodded as he was hauled unceremoniously to his feet. 

“Careful there, wouldn’t want to get too close,” one of the other cops called out to the one who was jostling Klaus towards the police car. “Wouldn’t wanna catch anything.”

They all laughed at their witty joke. Klaus was pushed into the back seat of one of the cop cars, Ray watching from the back seat of the other. 

Klaus tipped his head back. He’d been arrested so many times but something told him this time would be very different. 

This was the first time that he was actually scared.

Ray’s leg bounced up and down as he sat in the corner of the cell. The holding cells were divided into two ‘cages’, one for the black folks, one for the white. The one he was in was far more crowded although he’d take this side over the other side with men wearing seething glares and drunken smiles. Most of the men on his side were being held without charge, just ordinary citizens in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some of them were from the protest, including a guy called Jacob who came to all the meetings. He was fruitlessly trying to soak up the blood dripping from his head with a handkerchief. Apparently Ray’s friend Miles was in hospital. 

He thought of Allison. He didn’t know what to think of Allison.

Ever since she’d entered his life it was like the sun had finally broken through the cloudy winter, but he should have known it was too good to be true. 

What other explanation was there for a black woman in the middle of a riot being able to stop a cop from beating up a black man? She didn’t just stop him, he walked away like he had never seen Ray in the first place. What was she playing at? Had the mayor employed her to infiltrate the SJCC? No, this was far too long a game for the mayor to be one the one pulling the strings. She had been playing him for years. Maybe it was the Citizen’s Council or even the FBI? 

The FBI? Ray shook his head. This was _Allison_ he was talking about. Allison who sang songs so out of tune he couldn’t recognise them as she washed the dishes. Allison who always made sure she kissed him goodnight. Allison who loved him more fiercely than he ever thought possible. There had to be more to it. 

Ray was worried that Klaus wasn’t in the cells yet. They had arrived at the same time, so surely they would take the same time to question and process. The police hadn’t been overly interested in what Ray had to say. He was being charged either way. With what, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think it would be good. What was taking them so long with Klaus?

Finally, after what must have been the whole night, the heavy door opened. Ray pushed his way to the front of the cell past the men sleeping on the floor to see what was happening. Two cops were pushing Klaus along, wearing nothing but the cotton boxers Ray had accidentally purchased in the wrong size years ago. Klaus’ head was hung low, hair covering his face. The cops threw him into the cell, letting him fall heavily on the concrete floor. One of the other prisoners, a drunk man in a suit, moved forward to drag him to his feet.

“Y’all need to sleep with one eye open in there now you got a queer in with ya,” one of the cops jeered, slamming the cell door shut. The drunk stumbled back, settling back in his position against the bars to leave Klaus crumpled on the floor.

“Klaus!” Ray called, waving to try to get his attention. Klaus moved, dragging his knees under him so that he was crouched over them. He pushed his hair out of his face. 

Ray sighed in relief to see that there were no new marks on his skin apart from a couple of scrapes and scratches, but he did look dazed and confused. 

“Klaus!” he called again. Klaus looked up. He looked exhausted. He rubbed his unbandaged hand over his arm, shivering. 

“You know him?” Jacob asked, scrunching up his nose. 

Ray nodded, taking off his jacket.

“Klaus, come over here,” Ray hissed, holding his jacket out between the bars. Klaus scooted over, accepting the jacket and slipping it over his shoulders. He brought his knees up to his chest, huddling under it.

“What happened?” Ray asked, looking him over. Klaus just shrugged, his face blank. 

Of course, he couldn’t tell him even if he wanted to.

“Did they hurt you?” Ray whispered. Klaus paused, then shook his head. 

He was thankful Allison wasn’t seeing this. She’d probably storm back into the station and rip those cops limb from limb. 

A man in a plaid shirt who had obviously had too much to drink whistled from the other cell.

“Is that ya boyfriend?” he asked Klaus. Ray stiffened. If this turned nasty, Ray wouldn’t be able to do a thing with the bars between them. 

Klaus just looked over at the man and rolled his eyes. He scooted away from Ray towards the corner of the cell then pulled the jacket tighter around his shoulders and sunk against the bars, like he was trying to get some sleep. 

Ray went to get up and move closer to where Klaus was sitting when Jacob rested a hand on his knee. 

Ray sat back down warily.

“I’m talking to you,” the man slurred, jabbing a finger in Klaus’ direction. 

Ray opened his mouth to respond, but Jacob pulled on his arm. He shook his head and muttered under his breath.

“We have our own problems. Don’t get involved in nobody else’s.”

Klaus looked up at the drunk man daringly. 

“Well aren’t you pretty,” the man jeered. A couple of the other inmates chuckled. 

Ray felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He tried to convince himself that saying something would just add fuel to the fire, that the best thing was to ignore the man, but deep down he knew that wasn’t what he was doing.

He was thinking of the cause. Of _his_ cause.

He was thinking of keeping his head down. Of getting out of jail quickly. 

The others needed him, he was their leader. If he got in trouble intervening on behalf of Klaus, they wouldn’t let him out for weeks, maybe longer. 

He’d fought too hard and sacrificed too much to let anything jeopardize all the hard work. He’d even sacrificed his job. 

He was thinking of how scared he had been hours earlier pinned behind the cop car with that baton coming down. 

He couldn’t.

“Careful, he might start charging you,” a weedy man with knobbly knees joined in. More laughter resounded from that comment, the crowd of drunks and vagrants growing braver.

Klaus watched them with his big green eyes. 

The comments kept coming. Left unchecked, the men’s comments became more lewd. Comments about Klaus’ body that made Ray shudder, about what they thought should be done to queers like him. Violent suggestions that made Jacob turn away, muttering to himself. 

The whole time, Klaus just watched them without reaction, a witness to their depravity.

********

Ben showed himself to Allison as soon as the cops left the house. He needed to be quick so he didn’t sap too much of Klaus’ energy.

“You have to get them out of there. You have to get Klaus out.” He was hanging onto Allison’s arms desperately.

“I can’t,” she sobbed, sitting on the couch.

“Yes you can, you just need to rumour the police . . .”

Allison shook her head. “I already tried that tonight and look where it got us,”

“It’s the only way. You saw what they did to Klaus last time. You can’t leave him in there, and what about Ray?”

Ben watched as his sister wiped at her face with her hand, her breathing stuttering. 

“What if I make it worse?”

“You have to try,” Ben urged, rubbing a hand on his sister’s back. “You won’t be thinking of a rumour on the spot this time, we can plan this out.”

Allison looked up at Ben, her eyes shining with tears. She nodded, swallowing down her tears with new resolve. 

“You’re right. What do we do?”

Once they had worked out some semblance of a plan, Ben left Allison to work out the finer details while he rejoined Klaus. He searched for the pull that he always felt to his brother and followed it. 

He opened his eyes to find himself in an interrogation room. He spun around, stopping when he saw Klaus pressed up against a wall in nothing but his boxers. There were five cops in the room, a couple lounging on the chairs while the others leaned back on the walls from where they watched and laughed. The one who had Klaus pressed up against the wall yanked his head back by his hair.

An older cop who looked to be in charge opened the door. 

“What’s going on in here?” he asked, more bored than concerned. One of the men that had been in the chairs jumped up, suddenly alert. 

“Just a strip search, Sarge,” the other cop on the chairs replied lazily, dangling Dave’s dog tags from his finger. “You know what these queers are like, always high on something. We thought he might have drugs.”

The sergeant rolled his eyes. “Just get him into the cells, alright? I’ve got three calls out here and only two officers left in my station and the commissioner up my arse about The Visit” He slammed the door shut.

“Well, you heard the Sarge. We have to get him back in the cells,” the one in the chair said. He looked around deviously at the other cops, two of which Ben recognised from back at Allison’s house. “Shame we won’t have time to get him dressed again.”

The other cops broke into peals of laughter. 

Ben followed the cops as they dragged Klaus into the cell, stealing a sliver of power to snatch up the dog tags from the table as he went. 

They threw him into the ‘white’ side. Even the cells were segregated. How charming.

“Klaus, can you hear me?” Ben asked, not wanting to make himself solid enough to touch. Klaus already looked so worn out. 

After Ray spoke to him, Klaus seemed to come back to himself a bit. He sat back on the bars, wrapped in Ray’s jacket. Ben sat next to him, shoulder to shoulder. 

When the jeers started, Ben started reciting.

“ _In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticising anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had._ ”

He continued to read the book from memory to Klaus, the only acknowledgement that his brother made of his presence being the slight tilt of his head in Ben’s direction. 

He hoped Allison would be there soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ray - what are you doing? (don't judge him too harshly, he's got some developing to do!)
> 
> What's Allison and Ben's plan?
> 
> Poor Klaus :(
> 
> PS: The book Ben is reading to Klaus is the Great Gatsby. I dunno, just thought it was the sort of book Ben might know and Klaus might like to listen to. I looked up the Jules Verne book that Ray gives Allison and that sounded hella not the mood. 
> 
> Next up - some more sad times and some much needed sibling bonding.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison flexes her power. Klaus sees Dave.
> 
> The sibs drown their sorrows eating peanut butter in bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still blown away by the response. I think there's like 3/4 chapters to go - but I'm always wrong.

Sitting and waiting wasn’t Allison’s preferred method of working through a mess, and what a mess this was. 

Both her brother and her husband had been arrested by prejudiced police who didn’t give a damn about justice and had been thrown in a jail cell to rot. She’d called the station late last night after Ben left to ask what they had been charged with or why they hadn’t been given a phone call or a lawyer but the cop on the front desk had just hung up on her. 

She hated waiting, but Ben was right. They had to be sensible about this. She could just go in and rumour her way into the station and get them to open the cell, but how long until they came after Ray and Klaus again?

So, instead she waited from the early hours of the morning parked outside the Midwest City Hotel, far enough away from the entrance that the doorman wouldn’t see her. With the JFK visit only days away every big wig in the state was in town, most of them staying at the fanciest hotel in the city on taxpayers’ money to meet daily at City Hall and make sure the visit went as smoothly as possible. 

If only they knew.

Finally, just after eight, the Police Commissioner stepped through the grand front doors of the hotel, wearing his perfectly pressed uniform, hat tucked under his arm, a briefcase in the other. Allison recognised him from the news reports, a big chested man who had fought in World War II and earned a ton of medals. 

He stood by the road side where cabs had been picking up dignitaries over the last hour. 

She stepped out of the car, and took a deep breath. She would only get one shot at this. 

Allison ran across the road, crashing straight into the Commissioner standing on the curb on the other side. She made sure to collide with the briefcase, sending it skidding along the concrete. 

“Oh, I am so sorry Sir,” she said dramatically, channeling the local accent, her acting experience proving useful again. The man scowled, dusting off his jacket while looking around for his case. 

“I just wasn’t looking, oh, I am so sorry!” Allison said, waiting for him to bend down and pick up the suitcase. As soon as he went to reach for it, she mirrored his actions, pretending to help. She grabbed the handle just before he did, the both of them bent over behind the cover of a taxi that had just pulled up.

She leaned into his ear and spoke before he could have a chance to notice her strange behaviour.

“ _I heard a rumour that you used the hotel phone to call the Dallas South Police Station and that you told them to release everyone from the holding cells immediately to look good for the JFK visit._

She had brainstormed the rumour with Ben the night before. They needed something that wouldn’t seem suspicious, but would be foolproof in getting Klaus and Ray out of lock up. It seemed plausible that the Police Commissioner would want the cells clear if the station were to be toured, especially when JFK had started to show some sympathy towards the civil rights movement and their cells were full of coloured people. It would also be hard to link a rumour like that back to Allison, Ray or Klaus. 

She felt the rush of power as her rumour took effect. The Commissioner rose like a man possessed, his eyes glazed over. The doorman rushed forward to collect his briefcase which he had left on the pavement, chasing inside after him.

Allison rushed back to the car, driving straight over to the station.

Allison waited in the car outside the station, watching as men streamed out the front doors. It reminded her of picking up Claire from pre-school. Some of the men she recognised from the sit in, that guy James or Jacob or something and a young guy that she had seen hanging out with Miles. There were some rougher looking guys too, one wearing a plaid shirt that made Allison wonder if she had accidentally freed any murderers. She couldn’t think of that now, maybe she would ask Ray and Klaus if there was anyone who really should be back in jail and she could always rumour them to turn themselves in.

Speaking of Ray and Klaus, they were nowhere to be seen.

Allison pulled the keys out of the ignition and went inside.

It didn’t take long to find them. Ray was standing at the front counter, speaking heatedly with the cop on the front desk. 

“You’re free to go Mr. Chester. I would suggest you do.”

“Not until you get his clothes,” Ray argued back.

“Ray, honey, is everything okay?” Allison asked, hugging her husband. He gave her a quick hug back, his body hard. Right, they had been fighting before all this. Allison had hoped Ray had cooled off by now.

He stood with his hands on his hips, sleeves rolled up and tie loose around his neck.

“They won’t get his clothes,” Ray gritted through his teeth, pointing to the seats on the other side of the counter. Allison stepped around to see what Ray was pointing at.

Curled up with his knees tucked into his chest was Klaus, wearing nothing but Ray’s jacket. 

The fury rushed through Allison like a wave of heat. She pulled the keys out of her purse.

“Ray, go wait in the car.”

“Allison . .”

She turned to him, glaring.

“Go wait in the car.” She was so angry that she felt a small wash of power seep into her words. Ray took the keys, watching her curiously before heading out to the car.

Allison turned back to the cop on the desk.

“I heard a rumour that you got Klaus’ clothes.”

The cop robotically walked out the back, returning a moment later with a plastic bag that he handed to Allison. She snatched it from him, pulling Klaus’ pants out and bending in front of him, helping her vacant brother to put them on. 

“Are you okay?” Allison asked him, nudging him to his feet to pull the pants up the rest of the way. He nodded, rubbing his hand over his face. He looked so tired. She didn’t bother with the shirt, Ray’s jacket was big enough to give him enough coverage over his chest. 

She took Klaus’ arm in her own and guided him out, but not before stopping at the desk for one final word.

“I heard a rumour you think there are spiders in your clothes.”

Allison took her brother out to the car, not bothering to turn back. 

With Klaus bundled into the back seat and Ray in the passenger seat, Allison started the engine, keen to put as much distance between them and the Dallas Police Force as possible. 

As soon as they were around the corner, Allison put a hand on Ray’s knee. 

“Are you alright?”

Ray sighed deeply, leaning his elbow against the car door. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“Klaus?” she asked, looking in the rear vision mirror. He gave a nod, lounged over the back seat, leaving just enough room for Ben. 

“Can we go past the salon?” Ray asked. Allison glanced at the clock hands on the dash board. It was almost ten in the morning.

“Don’t you want to go home first? You both look exhausted, and you must be starving . . .”

“Allison, I just want to go to the salon first!” Ray snapped. Allison’s mouth clicked shut. She knew he must be stressed after a night in jail. He probably wouldn’t be able to rest until he knew what happened to the others anyway. 

She parked outside Odessa’s, starting to undo her seatbelt. 

“I’m going in alone,” Ray said coldly. Allison looked up, noticing the contempt on her husband’s face. This couldn’t still be about last night?

“Ray, what’s wrong?” she asked, settling her hands in her lap. 

He didn’t answer, instead undoing his own seatbelt and opening the door. Allison rushed to undo hers.

“Klaus, will you be okay for a couple of minutes?” she asked, leaning over the back seat. He gave her a thumbs up and a false smile.

“Is Ben here?”

He nodded. Good.

“I’ll just be . . .” Allison didn’t know what she would be. She stepped out of the car, following after Ray. 

She grabbed him by the shoulder just as he reached the salon door. 

“Ray, talk to me.”

He scoffed, turning around. “What, the way you talk to me?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Allison asked, folding her arms. 

“I had been asking that cop for Klaus’ clothes for fifteen minutes straight. You just walk in and bam, you get his stuff. Then last night - you still haven’t told me what you said to the cop to make him stop - “

“I can explain,” Allison said, reaching out to Ray. He stepped back, folding his arms.

“Well, go on.”

What was she going to say? That she threatened the cop behind the desk? No - how would she explain the cop at the riot? He didn’t believe her when she told him that she begged him to stop.

Just more lies to cover up her rumours. 

Ray raised an eyebrow expectantly. 

“No? You can’t explain?”

“Ray, it’s not like that -”

“Well what is it like?” he fired back. “Because right now, I don’t know if I should let you in there and endanger all those folks,” he said, pointing at the salon. “I don’t know if you’re a spy, or if you’re working for the Citizen’s Council . . .”

“No Ray, I swear!”

“Then what is it?” he shouted. “What are you hiding from me?”

“Nothing!” Allison cried, wiping roughly at the tears filling her eyes. She looked up at Ray who was biting his own tongue, looking up to the sky. 

“I want to trust you . . .” he said, his voice cracking. “ . . . but I don’t know if I can.’”

********************

The moment the door slammed Klaus let it all go. He dropped sideways on the backseat with a strangled sob, curling his body in tightly. His tears ran down his cheeks and pooled on the vinyl seats. 

“Oh Klaus,” Ben said softly, his own voice trembling. He slid into the footwell, his own head resting next to Klaus’ on the seat. Klaus wanted so much to make him solid but he was only just hanging on as it was. Whatever Ben had been doing while he wasn’t in the cell had sapped his energy. 

Klaus cried loudly, not caring if anyone could hear him or see him, although he doubted it with the way he was lying in the back seat. His throat burned as he let out each strangled sob, relishing in the pain of it. 

“Klaus, you were so brave. I’m so proud of you.”

Ben’s words triggered something in Klaus that made him cry harder.  
“C’mon Klaus, sit up for me. Try and get some deep breaths in.”

Klaus pushed himself up, tipping his head back over the headrest. He took a deep breath, watching the people pass by across the street wearing their bright colours that shouldn’t be allowed in a world as dark as this. 

He wanted to go home. He wanted . . .

 _Dave_.

Actual Dave. Across the street. Klaus pressed his face to the glass. 

He was a lot younger, probably only just in his twenties, but Klaus would recognise that straight-backed loping walk anywhere. He jostled his way out of the car, slamming the door behind him. 

“Klaus, what are you doing?” 

Klaus pointed across the road as Dave disappeared into a hardware store. 

“Shit,” Ben breathed. “Klaus, think about what you’re doing . . .”

Klaus didn’t need to think. He needed Dave. 

He ran across the road like a man possessed, narrowly missing a boy on a bike. Klaus skipped over the curb, stopping outside the window of the shop. 

Dave was putting on an apron, smiling at an old man who was looking at a bunch of rakes. 

“Klaus, think about this. What are you going to do? You can’t talk, and even if you could, he hasn’t met you yet. What would you say to him? You’re not even wearing a shirt.”

It didn’t matter, this was Dave, _his_ Dave. God, he looked young. Klaus watched him as he laughed, taking the old man’s money and ringing it up through the till.

But Ben was right. This Dave wouldn’t hold his hand just because. He wouldn’t look at Klaus like he hung the moon and the stars. He wouldn’t kiss Klaus like nothing else mattered, like nothing else would ever be important ever again compared to that moment between the two of them.

This was not his Dave. His Dave died on the side of a mountain in Vietnam five years from now, bleeding out in his arms. 

Klaus reached for his dog tags before realising they were gone. Those cops had taken them. 

He reacted the same way he had to everything that happened in his life.

He ran. 

“Klaus, you don’t have to do this.”

Klaus waved a hand behind him. He’d perfected the art of blocking out Ben over the years, just because he’d been listening to him lately didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to ignore him.

He paid for the cheap bottle of bourbon with a crumpled five dollar bill that was still in his pants pocket, inflation being what it was. 

Uncapping the bottle with his teeth as soon as the front door of the shop tinkled on his way out, he took a deep sip, eyeing the park across the road. The liquor burned his throat, but it wasn’t as bad as a couple of days ago. It was definitely healing.

He plonked down under a tree, leaning back against the scratchy bark as he took another sip. He felt Ben sit down next to him. 

He held his hand out. Klaus spotted something dangling from it. 

Dave’s dog tags. 

Tears sprung to Klaus’ eyes as he gently took them from his brother’s hand. He slipped them over his head and hugged them to his chest. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I know he means a lot to you . . . I just didn’t want you to get hurt.”

Klaus nodded, looking up at his ghost brother through eyes blurred with tears. 

“C’mon doofus. We better go find Allison. She’ll be super worried, or super mad. You left the keys in the ignition and the car unlocked.”

Klaus winced. There were also a bunch of newly-released petty criminals on the loose. 

He stood up, capping the bottle and following Ben.

********************

Allison sniffed, searching the center console for a tissue while she steered with her other hand. Her conversation with Ray had not gone well. She understood where he was coming from, she really did. It was a suspicious time, with fears about the CIA and communists and the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement all thrown in together. 

Halfway through the conversation she came very close to telling him the truth, but then the fear seeped in.

What if he didn’t believe her?

What would she even say? I’m a super-powered ex-superhero from the future?

Even with all the hurt and confusion, he still seemed conflicted, like he wanted to believe that Allison was who she said she was, a woman who fell in love with a passionate and honest man. 

He asked for time to think.

Allison returned to the car, fighting back the tears, only to find it abandoned and Klaus nowhere to be found. 

She turned the corner, keeping her eyes peeled for her lanky, long haired brother. Just as she stopped at a set of lights, she spotted him, looking around outside a post office. He suddenly laid eyes on her, as if someone had just pointed her out. He gave her a wave, a hip flask sized bottle of dark liquor in his hand. 

He clambered into the front seat. She noticed his eyes were red rimmed. At first she worried about him slipping into old habits until she noticed the tears streaked down his cheeks. 

“Are you okay?” she asked. He nodded, smiling tightly. He pointed to Allison. 

“Yeah, I’m okay,” she replied, choking back a fresh wave of tears. Klaus frowned, throwing himself at her and wrapping her up in a tight hug. She hugged him back, tears falling freely. 

Someone honked her from behind. Klaus chucked, sticking his finger up at the car behind them. Allison laughed, pressing her foot to the accelerator. 

Back at the house, Klaus had gone straight to the bathroom to have a bath. Allison laid on the couch, unable to find the motivation to make lunch like she had said she would. Klaus stood in the doorway twenty minutes later, one towel wrapped around him like a dress, the other (which she was pretty sure was Ray’s towel) in a turban over his hair.

She was glad to see there were no extra bruises, well, none that she could see. Even the ones on his face and around his neck had started to fade. 

Still, there was something _off_ about him. Something in his forced smile. 

She thought of how she found him in the police station, stripped down to his underwear. She would have to ask Ben what happened once Klaus had enough strength to summon him again. 

He cocked his head sideways inquiringly.

“Do you want some lunch?”

He gave her a deadpan glare, crossing his arms. Of course, the king of deflection would see through her own paltry attempts.

“Fine, how about we grab the jar of peanut butter and a pack of Graham crackers and we’ll go upstairs and talk about it?”

He nodded, clapping his hands.

Allison reached the top of the stairs with a whole range of treats on a tray right as Klaus stepped out of the spare room that Ray had converted into his room. He was wearing a pair of Ray’s old jogging pants and one of Allison’s soft woolen jumpers. They would have to take him out shopping soon or at least for a visit back to where he was living to pick up some clothes. 

They settled in Allison’s bed, propped up on pillows with the tray set between them. Allison took a gherkin from the jar with a fancy little toothpick that everyone seemed to have in 1963 and dipped it in the cream cheese tub. Klaus made a face, shaking his head at the end of the bed where Ben was presumably sitting. 

He looked back at Allison expectantly.

“Fine. But you aren’t getting out of this either, voice or no voice. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

Klaus looked around innocently, scratching his head. His still wet hair was super curly. He must have been blow drying it straighter. She shook her head with a smile. Of course he was. 

“So, I don’t know where to start.”

Klaus just watched her expectantly. Right, he couldn’t talk. It was up to her. 

“I don’t know what to do. He was already suspicious about the night of the riots. I rumoured a cop who was going to kill him.”

Klaus’ face softened, his hand finding her arm. 

“That’s what we were fighting about the other night. Then the thing with your clothes - thank God he hasn’t worked out how you all got released . . .”

Klaus’ eyes widened.

“Oh don’t give me that,” she said, pointing to the end of the bed. “It was all ghost boy’s idea anyway.”

Ben glowed blue, cross legged on the blankets between their feet. 

“You were going to rumour them no matter what. In fact, it was your idea to rumour the Commissioner.”

“Ben!” Allison said, looking at Klaus and seeing his hands glow blue. “Are you sure you should be . . . “ She nodded towards Ben’s blue form. 

Klaus motioned towards himself, reclining in bed while eating a strawberry.

“Nah, he’s okay. He’s resting, and he’s going to have an epic nap after this anyway.”

Klaus stuck his tongue out.

“Don’t give me that you little shit. You’ve been day-drinking, you know that makes you sleepy.”

Klaus dropped back into the pillows, huffing. 

“Seriously though, he can handle this. I can feel his energy levels have gone up. He’s fought off that infection, although I don’t know how given what’s been happening.”

Klaus flexed his bicep on his uninjured arm. 

Both Allison and Ben laughed. 

“Rightio stick-man. The only reason you can see your muscles is because you’re so damn skinny,” Ben said, leaning over and pinching the skin on the back of Klaus’s arm. Klaus hissed, pushing Ben away. 

Allison laughed, chomping on a Graham cracker. The bed was going to be so full of crumbs, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. 

“Why don’t you just tell him the truth?” Ben asked suddenly. Klaus nodded, pointing to Ben.

“Pfft, like he’s going to believe me.”

“He might.”

“And what if he doesn’t? He’s going to think I’m crazy.”

“What’s your alternative? Let him think you’re lying to him?”

Allison sighed. “When did you get so smart?”

“Well Klaus hasn’t survived all these years using his own brain.”

Klaus threw a strawberry at Ben who flickered out of sight just as the strawberry sailed through him, reappearing a second later.

“Missed.”

“So what happened with you mister,” Allison asked, poking Klaus’ ribs. He rolled his eyes. 

“Nuh uh, you don’t get out of this. C’mon.”

Klaus groaned, then reached into the collar of the jumper he was wearing to pull out the dog tags.

“Dave?”

He nodded. Then he pointed to his eyes. Allison took a second to work it out.

“You saw Dave?” 

He nodded, fidgeting with the dog tags. 

“What did he say?”

Klaus covered his eyes with his hand, his breath hitching. Allison’s heart panged. She moved the tray quickly, scooting over next to Klaus and rubbed a soothing hand on his shoulder. She could hear him sniffing.

“You didn’t talk to him.”

Klaus shook his head. Of course, without his voice, and Dave wouldn’t even know him yet! 

Allison stroked Klaus’ hair, combing through the damp curls.

“Oh Klaus.”

He sniffed deeply, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head. He took a deep breath. 

He mimed sleeping, folding his hands under his ear. 

“Of course, you get some rest.”

Allison popped the tray on the bed side table. By the time she turned back, Klaus was already on his side, facing away from her. His breathing had begun to even out.

Once she was sure he’d started to drift, she turned to Ben who was still faintly glowing.

“What do we do?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” Ben replied somberly before blinking out completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, Allison comes clean and shopping time!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison comes clean with Ray. Ray deals with some of his own feelings. Klaus gets a gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if I got the vibe right on this one, but I hope you enjoy!

Allison woke later that evening to the sound of the front door closing. She switched on the lamp, checking on Klaus. He was fast asleep, curled into the blankets. She left the lamp on in case he woke up. 

Slowly she slid out of the bed, tiptoeing out of the room and closing the door behind her. 

She walked down the stairs in stockinged feet to find Ray in the kitchen. She paused on the last step, locking eyes with her husband. They both looked away, Ray busying himself with removing his tie while Allison smoothed her dress. 

“How’s Klaus?” Ray asked, breaking the silence. 

“He’s sleeping.”

“Is he okay?” 

Allison shrugged. Ray shook his head. 

“He’s tougher that he looks. Still, I don’t know how he did it.” 

Allison frowned. 

“Did what?”

Ray sighed, dropping into one of the kitchen chairs. “All night, those excuses for men went at him and he didn’t react, not once.”

Allison pulled out a chair opposite Ray, sitting down quickly. “What do you mean they went at him?”

“They put him in the cell in his underwear after God knows how long with those cops, then those criminals, they just kept saying things to him. Horrible things. They went for hours.” Ray shuddered like he was trying to shake water from his ears. “It was like what those white folks were yelling at us at Stadler’s, but it was worse. Those things they said to him were _humiliating_.”

Allison pushed her chair back suddenly, clutching at her stomach. She looked towards the sink, feeling like she might be sick.

“Uh, I should have done something sooner,” she whispered, closing her eyes. 

“What do you mean you should have done something sooner?” Ray asked cautiously. 

Allison took a deep breath. “Can we go into the living room?”

Ray sat back in his chair, “Allison, no -”

“I want to explain,” she said firmly. “I want to tell you everything.”

And so Allison told Ray of the Umbrella Academy. Of super-strengthed Luther, knife wielding Diego, time-and-space travelling Five and sound-wave controlling Vanya.

“And you?” Ray asked. Allison couldn’t tell if he was believing her yet, but to be honest he probably didn’t know if he believed her either. 

“I can control people’s minds and actions.”

“Huh.” 

Ray froze still. 

“Klaus?”

“Er, he can see the dead.” Ray’s eyes popped out of his head. Allison nodded. “And this is where it gets a bit weirder.”

“A bit weirder?” Ray repeated in a high pitched voice Allison had never heard from him before.

“So he can kinda see our other brother, Ben.”

‘The one that died?”

“Yep. And lately he’s been able to make it so that he can interact.”

“In-ter-act.” Ray said, sounding out each syllable. 

“And the last teeny weeny detail is that we are also from the future.”

Ray nodded slowly, eyes wide. “Oh, okay. The future.”

“Twenty nineteen.”

“Twenty - twenty nineteen?”

Allison gave Ray a moment to process. 

After a moment, he spoke.

“Twenty nineteen.” 

“Twenty nineteen,” Allison affirmed.”I literally did drop out of the sky. You see, Vanya accidentally caused an apocalypse, but then Five tried to time jump us all back a week or whatever to stop it happening, only he went almost sixty years back and it looks like he may have dropped us off at the same place but not the same time. Klaus has been here for three years. I’ve been here two.”

Ray nodded, then headed straight for the drinks trolley, pouring himself a brandy that was much larger than his usual. 

Allison let out a breath, dropping her head into her hands. When she looked up, she saw that Klaus was now in the doorway, wearing a blanket like a cape. His hair had dried curly. Allison would have to convince him to leave it like that sometimes. 

Klaus looked at Ray skulling down the brandy, then to Allison before gesturing to Ray.

“I told him.”

Klaus grinned, then his face dropped as he watched Ray pour himself another brandy. He took the glass delicately from Ray’s hand then pulled him over to the couch, gesturing for him to sit down. 

He dropped the blanket and shook his limbs out, balling his good hand into a fist. Just as it began to glow blue, Ray jumped back hissing _holy sweet Jesus_.

Klaus opened his eyes, grinning.

“Hey Ray,” Ben said lazily from the armchair, one leg crossed over the other. 

“Holy fuck!” Ray jumped a mile off the couch, clutching at his chest. Allison had never heard Ray swear, ever. Ever ever. 

Ray grabbed Allison’s arm, eyes wide. 

“You’re telling the truth.”

Allison nodded. “Yep. Ray, meet the Umbrella Academy. Well, three of us anyway.”

Ray looked down at Allison’s arm, touching her tattoo.

“I think Klaus wants to add that it’s the three best members of the Umbrella Academy,” Ben interjected. Klaus nodded, picking up his blanket cape again.

Once Ray had calmed down (courtesy of a bit more brandy), Allison answered his questions about the future. Yes, there had been a black president. No, they didn’t win the war in Vietnam and no, communism never spread through the US. Things got better for coloured people and the civil rights movement made a difference, but there were still issues in 2019 that led to inequality. 

After an hour or so, Ray started yawning. Allison wasn’t surprised, she doubted he’d had the chance to sleep since before the sit-in. She went up stairs to change the sheets (there were crumbs _everywhere_ while Ray brushed his teeth, then she sent him up to bed. 

“I’ll come up in a bit,” she said, giving Ray a peck on the cheek. He nodded tiredly. He had deep bags under his eyes. 

She turned back to the kitchen where Klaus was washing the glasses awkwardly with one hand. He put the last glass in the rack, drying his hands on the tea towel. Ben had disappeared, obviously giving Klaus a break. 

“How are you doing?” Allison asked. He shrugged, miming sleeping. 

“Tired?”

He nodded, pointing to Allison. 

“Yeah, I’m pretty wrecked too. Listen, before we head up to bed I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

Klaus cocked his head sideways inquisitively. He pinched the jumper he was wearing, then posed with a hand on his hip. 

“No, I don’t want to know how you manage to pull that jumper off better than I can.”

Klaus waved his hand in a gesture that Allison could tell meant _your loss_. She stepped around the kitchen table, leaning against the counter. 

“I’m talking about what happened at the station.”

Klaus’ face flushed red, the smile sliding off his face. He ducked his head, rearranging the hem of his jumper. 

“Ray told me that the police took your clothes when you got there.”

Klaus nodded, still refusing to make any eye contact. Allison took a deep breath, steeling herself to ask the next question.

“Did . . . did they . .”

Before she could finish the question, Klaus shook his head vigorously. Allison let out a breath she didn’t realise she had been holding. 

“Were you scared they were going to?”

Klaus chewed his lip, then nodded. 

“Ray said in the cell there were some men who were saying some awful things to you,” she said softly, watching Klaus who was breathing a little quicker. “It would have been hard to listen to without retaliating.”

Klaus pointed to his throat and shrugged. 

“I don’t just mean saying something back, I know you have a decent right hook.” Klaus rolled his eyes. 

He mimed punching someone, then staggered back as if he’d been punched back, ending the charade with a shrug. He was right, he would have been in more trouble had he started a fight. 

“I don’t know if I could have sat there listening to that for hours on end.”

Klaus pointed to the empty kitchen chair that was pulled out from the table.

“Ben was with you,” Allison said simply. Klaus nodded, miming holding a book. “He read to you.”

Klaus nodded, looking over to Ben. He turned away suddenly, rearranging the glasses in the dish rack. 

Allison moved behind him, placing a gentle hand on his back. She wasn’t surprised to find his shoulders were shaking. Allison turned her brother around. He had his face covered with his hand, trying to hide the tears. 

“Oh Klaus.” She pulled him into a hug, tucking his head against her neck. He was trembling. Allison bit back her own tears, thinking about how nothing ever scared Klaus like that in the living world. Her brother had dealt with horrific ghosts since he was baby, been thrown into combat with a fairly useless power as a child and faced life on the streets on his own as a teen. It took a lot to scare Klaus. 

His breathing finally started to slow to deep gasps. Klaus pulled away, wiping his eyes and snotty nose with the tea towel. 

A glow of blue light appeared right next to Klaus.

“Oh that is gross,” Ben said, scrunching his nose. Klaus smirked, then tried to push the towel in Ben’s face, but their ghost-brother jumped backwards, swatting at Klaus. 

Allison threw an arm around Klaus’ shoulders. 

“C’mon, let go up to bed, but we’re going past the laundry first to drop off that tea towel.”

Allison knew Klaus wasn’t okay, but if her and Ben kept looking out for him maybe he would be.

The next day was pretty quiet in the Chestnut House. Both Ray and Klaus slept through to lunchtime. Allison heated up some chicken soup from the freezer to take up to Ray. She had checked in on Klaus and he was gone to the world. He probably needed sleep more than food at this point. 

Allison set the soup down on the bedside table, sitting on the bed next to Ray. She shook his shoulder gently. 

“Hey Ray, time for some food.” 

Ray opened his eyes slowly, smiling up at Allison. She smiled back, touching the pillow creases on his cheek. Without warning, he grabbed Allison around the waist and pulled her onto the bed. She shrieked, giggling as he rolled her over him into the middle. He nuzzled at the back of her neck with his beard in a way that he knew drove her crazy.

They looked at each other face to face, their movements stilled.

“Are we okay?” Ray asked, searching Allison’s eyes. She nodded, pressing her nose to Ray’s.

“Are you okay?” 

Ray nodded once, then pursed his lips.

“Well, I will be. Once I’ve got used to the idea that my wife’s a super hero and that my brother-in-law can talk to ghosts, one of which is my _other_ brother-in-law . . .” He finished with a smirk. 

Allison winced, still smiling. “Sorry, we’re a little _much_.”

Lucky she hadn’t met Diego yet. Or Five.

Oh God - or Luther.

Pushing that thought well and truly out of her head, she sat up, pointing to the soup.

“I brought you some lunch.”

Ray moved his hand around Allison’s waist, curving up her back as he moved to lean over her.

“But I’ve already got lunch right here,” he said with a sly grin. He kissed Allison’s neck, his stubble scraping her skin again and she resigned herself to the fact that she heated up that soup for nothing. 

Klaus didn’t wake up until dinnertime, a fact Allison and Ray were very thankful for. He came down stairs into the living room stretching out his long limbs.

“Sleep well?” Allison asked, her legs over Ray’s lap. Ray sat up straighter as if he had been caught doing something wrong.

He nodded vigorously as he yawned. To be fair, he looked a lot better. He had a lot more colour back and his eyes were sharper, tracking around the room instead of sinking back in their sockets. 

Ben popped into view, sitting on the arm chair.

She forgot about Ben and his ghostly movements.

“So what do you usually get up to when Klaus is asleep?” Allison asked him casually. Ray’s head snapped up, cottoning on to the fact their private time may not have been that private. 

He shrugged, hands casually clasped between his knees. 

“Read. I can actually pick up books now, and you’ve got a pretty good collection down here.”

Allison let out a breath of relief. 

“Well Ray teaches English at college,” she said, making conversation. Ben looked suitably impressed. 

“That explains the collection,” Ben replied, looking over to the bookcase.

“So you’ve just been down here reading? Must get boring,” Allsion chuckled. Ben shrugged, picking up a book from the lamp table and reading the back cover.

“Well, I went to see what you guys were doing but you seemed _very busy_ so I just came down here,” he said flatly, still studying the book. 

Allison felt her face flush bright red while Ray choked, next to her, coughing and spluttering. So Ben _had_ walked in on them.

Klaus’ eyes tracked from Ben then to Allison and Ray, then back for Ben before stretching wide. His mouth formed a perfect ‘O’, his hands flapping excitedly. 

Klaus pointed at Ben, then at Allison and Ray, his face awash with delight. 

“I’m so glad you can’t talk right now,” Allison sneered at Klaus, throwing a cushion at him. “And Ben, who would have known you were such a creep!” she added, throwing another pillow at him. It bounced off his outstretched arm, Ben not bothering to make himself incorporeal and deflecting it instead. 

“Hey, that was nothing compared to what I’ve had to see hanging around Klaus all these years.” 

Klaus baulked, then pouted his lip before nodding, deciding to agree with Ben. He shook his arse at Ben, earning complaints from both Ben and Allison. 

Noticing Ray was rather quiet, Allison turned to look at her husband. 

He looked like he was trying to melt into the couch. 

“C’mon, stop making my husband uncomfortable with your freakiness. Off to bed, we have a big day tomorrow.”

Klaus stopped his ridiculous attempts trying to get into Ben’s lap, head springing up like an inquisitive meerkat. 

“It’s a surprise.”

Klaus had begged to find out where they were going all of the next morning with his huge puppy dog eyes (the left one looking a lot more like he’d forgotten to wash off makeup than a black eye). He whined about not knowing what to wear (he stole Allison’s shirt anyway) and still tried to find out what they were doing even in the car on the way. Allison could tell Ray was also curious, but after Klaus’ theatrics he tried to remain mature. 

Finally, she pulled up in front of a strip of clothing stores. 

“Alright, Klaus I’m sick of you stealing my clothes and you’re going to need a new suit Ray if you’re going to be meeting with all those government officials.” Allison beamed proudly at Ray. He had gotten the call that morning that the President’s people wanted to meet with him after the sit-in. This was the biggest step forward in their campaign, a step that could actually mean something. 

Klaus clapped excitedly, flinging open the door of the shop.

Ray grabbed her arm as she followed, pulling her back.

“Allison, we can’t go in there. They don’t let _us_ try clothes on,”

Allison smirked, beckoning her husband to follow her.

“You wanted to see how my power worked, didn’t you?”

A quick rumour and a gobsmacked Ray and next thing Allison knew, her husband was trying on suit after suit, swirling and preening in the mirror. 

Klaus bounced over to the mirror, clutching a fitted suit with deep maroon and black stripes. He held it out to Ray who looked it over with a quirked eyebrow. 

“Try it on,” Allison urged. “He’s got a good eye for this sort of thing.” 

Ray sighed, heading back to the changeroom. When he came back out, Allison took in a deep breath.

“What do you think?” Ray asked cautiously. Klaus tapped his chin, deep in thought, then dropped a suave charcoal hat on Ray’s head, tilting it to the perfect angle. He stood back, nodding at his handiwork. 

Allison stood next to Ray in the mirror, running her hand over the small of his back. 

“What do you think?” he asked her, turning to check out his side profile. The suit was closely fitted over his shoulder, tapering perfectly over his arse. She could tell he was loving the hat from the way he kept tilting his head.

“I’m thinking that I wish none of these other folk were in the shop right now,” she said, biting her lip seductively. Ray pressed his lips to hers, no longer worried about the shop assistants still under Allison’s spell. 

“Maybe you could tell them a rumor to all go away,” he teased. 

Klaus burst out of the change rooms like a model on a runway, pushing in front of them to get a look in the mirror at the forest green pants he’d just tried on, stretching and contorting himself to get a look from all angles. Allison laughed, the moment completely ruined. 

Ray left the shop with three new suits and that hat along with a few shirts. Klaus left with the pants and a paisley shirt that he’d found somewhere deep in the racks of plain colours. They got to another ladies store a few doors down when Klaus pointed, eager to go in. Allison eyed a stunning red-and-black drop waisted dress in the window. 

“C’mon, you should have some fun too,” Ray said, dragging her into the store. 

She rumoured the shop assistants again, trying on dress after dress, some of which Klaus dropped off from his rounds around the store while looking for his own outfits. Ray watched him uneasily.

“What is he doing?” he asked as Allison came out of the stall, adjusting the price tags that were digging into her back. 

“I think he might be trying to ask the assistant to put on the radio, ah yep. There it goes.”

_You broke my heart because I couldn’t dance,_  
You didn’t even want me around  
And now I’m back, to let you know I can really shake ‘em down 

Klaus danced up the aisles with a dress thrown over one shoulder and a pair of rose coloured sunglasses on, swinging around an invisible and probably quite reluctant dance partner. Allison burst out laughing, just imagining Ben’s face at being swung around like he was at some barn dance.

“C’mon, are you going to try those on?” Allison asked with a smirk. Klaus rolled his eyes, not wanting to be hurried up. He dumped his pile on a velvet chair outside the change rooms, pulling out garments and tossing them in the keep and discard piles. He pulled out a floaty white long dress that had a classic sixties kaftan look about it, going to put it in the keep pile.

“Klaus,” Allison said softly. You know that you can’t wear that one around here.” 

He huffed, rolling his shoulders forward in an exaggerated movement as if acknowledging that he knew that. He then made a hopping movement with his hands, pointing to where he was, then hopping his hand forward.

“For when we go back?”

He nodded, smiling at the dress. 

“Alright, but you can only try on three of those things in the pile. Otherwise we’ll be here for days. Just the more fitted stuff that might not fit.”

Klaus poked his tongue out, choosing a pair of tight maroon pants and two shirts before disappearing behind the curtain. 

“I’ll just wait outside, honey,” Ray said with a tight smile. He tilted his new hat to the shop assistant on the way out. That was a bit odd, that Ray would leave Allison alone in a shop that didn’t serve coloureds (well, unless they were rumoured to).

As they went to pay, Allison felt a prickle on the back of her neck. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed two women near the resort wear section staring. She turned, flashing them a glare when she realised they weren’t looking at her. They were watching Klaus try on scarves in the mirror just to the side of the main counter. Allison rolled her eyes, paying the assistant as she packaged up their purchases in brown paper. 

While Klaus was still oblivious, she wasn’t going to make a scene. 

Ray took the bags from her as she left the shop, Klaus trailing behind them talking rapidly to Ben about the clothes he’d tried on. Allison chuckled, turning back to Ray who had gone quiet. His eyes were darting around, watching the people passing them in the street.

“C’mon, out with it,” Allison sighed. 

“What?” he asked, feigning confusion.

“Whatever’s bugging you.”

Ray let out a long breath, adjusting his grip on the shopping bags. 

“I mean, I know he’s . . .” Ray gave Allison a meaningful look.

“Not straight?” she offered, filling in the gap. Ray’s eyes flashed, looking around to see if anyone heard before nodding. 

“Yeah, that, but does he have to be so . . .”

“So?” Allison asked, not willing to help Ray out a second time.

“So . . . obvious about it?”

Allison straightened her back, looking ahead and taking a deep breath. 

“So he should hide it?” she asked as calmly as she could.

“Well, yes, I mean, no -”

“So he should deny a part of who he is? He should act like something he’s not?”

“I don’t mean it like that - ”

“He should just hide the part of him that people don’t like?”

“Yes! I mean . . .” Ray sighed, completely flustered. 

Allison looked over her shoulder to see Klaus distracted looking at the vinyls displayed outside a record store. She stopped, turning to face Ray.

“Klaus is who he is, and most of the time he’s pretty happy with who he is. Why should he have to change that because some folk, folk who aren’t even affected by his preferences by the way, don’t feel comfortable? Okay, so I know we’re in the sixties and things aren’t like they are in the future, but if he keeps hiding, if we keep hiding, nothing will change. What harm is he doing choosing some of his clothes like you and some like me?”

Allison crossed her arms, taking a deep breath. 

“I thought you of all people would know what it’s like to have people judge you for something you shouldn’t have to be ashamed of.”

With that, Allison stormed off back to Klaus, saying something about ice cream in the park and Ray meeting them there.

***********

Ray wandered down to the park, one hand in his pocket. He’d dropped the bags off in the car, taking the time walking around the block to have a think.

He spotted Klaus and Allison on the grassy lawn, Klaus lounging in the sun while Allison sat up on her hip, looking every part the Hollywood actress he now knew her to be. 

She shielded her eyes from the sun, looking up at him as he approached. She kept her expression even, not letting Ray off the hook that easily.

Klaus gasped, holding his hands to his chest while looking at the small wrapped stem of gladiolas he was carrying.

“Not for you,” Ray teased, handing them to Allison who took them cautiously. 

“Klaus, can you go chat to Ben?” she said, motioning towards the lake.

Klaus shrugged and pointed next to him before wincing sharply and rubbing his ear. He seemed to be in an animated argument with Ben before he huffed his way to his feet and trudged over to the lake. 

Ray sat down in the spot he vacated, arms resting on his knees. 

“So about before . . .” he started. Allison placed a hand on his.

“No, those things I said - ”

“No, you were right. How can I be asking white folk to accept us for being different if I can’t accept Klaus for being, well, Klaus?”

Allison smirked, looking over at her brother who was feeding some of his ice cream cone to the ducks. 

“It’s not the same,”

“No, it’s not, but it also is.”

“I shouldn’t have said those things though,” Allison said, rubbing her hand over Ray’s. “You were just looking out for him.”

“I just thought of what happened the other night and I didn’t want something like that to happen again.”

Allison nodded. “Maybe we’ll talk to him about being a bit more careful, for his own preservation. He knows he’s not in 2019 anymore, I think he just . . . forgets.”

“I don’t want him to feel like he can’t be who he is around us though,” Ray added. 

Allison smiled, reaching up to kiss Ray on the cheek.

“This is why I love you Raymond Chestnut.”

She spotted the package wrapped in paper and string that Ray had tucked next to him 

“What’s that?” she asked, sliding it out. 

“It’s for Klaus. I saw it in a toy shop on the way.” Ray said, suddenly second guessing his purchase. 

“I know he acts like one sometimes, but he’s not an actual child!” Allison teased, turning that package over in her hands. She whistled sharply, getting Klaus’ attention. He bounded back from the lake, pushing invisible Ben with his shoulder the whole way.

“Ray got you something,” Allison said, handing Klaus the package. Klaus plopped down on the grass, taking the package excitedly. He tore at the paper awkwardly with his splint until he’d pulled most of it away. 

“What is it?” Allison asked, leaning over.

Klaus’ mouth was wide, eyes tracking over the smooth wood. He spun it around to show his sister. 

Ray had seen the Ouija board on his walk in the window of the toy shop. It wasn’t the best quality, but Ray figured the light weight wood would make it more portable. 

“After last night I finally worked out what those hand tattoos were about. Then I saw this, and I thought maybe you could use it to talk to us, until your voice heals a bit more.”

He wasn’t ready for the gangly arms that were thrown around his neck or the bony body knocking him flat onto his back. A beat later, Klaus was crawling off him in a rush, surreptitiously looking around, smoothing out his clothes. So he _had_ overheard their disagreement. He sat next to Ray, trying to smooth his features out into something more demure, but he couldn’t wipe the huge smile off his face. He placed the board on the grass in the middle of their circle and started pointing out letters with his finger.

T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "He's not an actual child" she says after sending him off to the lake to play with his brother.
> 
> Seriously, how good did Ray look in those suits? Phwoar
> 
> Some action up next :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group run into some old 'friends'. The Swedes pay a visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a very different vibe - way less serious and more Ben-centric. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

It was dark by the time they started to head back. Ray had insisted on detouring past a fried chicken restaurant on the southern edge of town to get some take out. It was a nice night, so they decided to leave the car parked where it was and walk. Klaus was nattering on, walking beside Allison, using the Oiuja board by spelling out key words and using hand gestures for the rest. 

He had just spelled out the word H-A-T and pointed to Ray, to which Allison nodded with a smile. 

“Yeah, the hat suits him.” 

Klaus winked at her, spelling out the next word. She watched his fingers, scoffing as he pointed to the letters.

“Yes, yes, it’s very sexy.”

Klaus nodded, feeling pleased with himself. 

Ray stopped suddenly in front of them, holding his arm out.

“Hey honey, maybe we go down Seventh Street?” he suggested, feigning calm. He was standing on the corner, tilting his hat further over his eyes as he peered into the next street. Klaus leaned over Ray’s shoulder, trying to see what had him so spooked.

“Hey Klaus, how about we go the other way?” Ray said, trying to gently pull him back, but it was no use, Klaus had seen. 

It was four of the cops from the other night, only a few yards away across the narrow street. The two from the night at the gay bar, plus the one that had told the others to put him in the cell without his clothes and the other fat one that had been pulling his hair. 

They were crowding around two black women who looked to Klaus to be sex workers. The fair haired cop with the big mouth was saying something to them, the other cops roaring with laughter. They were standing around drinking from coffee cups, boxing the two women in the doorway of a boarded up theatre. One of the women looked terrified, a tall girl in a tight electric blue dress. The shorter one, in a stunning gold number that Klaus had a lot of appreciation for didn’t look as intimidated, her chin tilted up. 

“Are they the same cops from the other night?” Allison asked, her teeth gritted. Ray nodded. 

“C’mon, let’s go,” Ray whispered, gently taking Klaus by the shoulder. 

“No fucking way.”

Klaus’ head snapped the other way towards his brother’s voice. Ben was glaring at the scene, invisible to Allison and Ray. 

“This is too good an opportunity to miss,” Ben said, cracking his neck and stretching his arms over his head. Ray tried to pull Klaus away again, but he just held his hand out, pulling out the Ouija board to spell out W-A-I-T. He settled into position, shielded by the phone booth on the corner, motioning to Allison and Ray to hide themselves as Ben stormed over to the cops. Klaus heard Ray hiss something to Allison behind him, but they stayed, waiting in the shadows. 

Ben crossed the road, hands dug into the pockets of his leather jacket and strode straight over to the cops who were still harassing the two women. Klaus watched with glee as Ben circled the men, looking them up and down. He started small, firstly just tipping one of the cops’ hats from their heads. Klaus grinned, watching as the fat cop bent over to pick it up. Ben looked over to his brother and winked as he let his hand fly into the tall guy’s coffee cup, spilling it all over the loud mouth standing next to him.

Klaus could hear them shouting from across the road.

_“What the hell did you do that for?”_

_“I didn’t do nothing, it must have been the wind!”_

_“The wind?!”  
_  
Klaus sniggered into his hand, looking back at Allison. She looked confused for a moment until it dawned on her. She rolled her eyes. 

“Ben?” his sister whispered. Klaus nodded gleefully, turning back to the show. 

Ben knocked another coffee cup into the same cop. 

_”What is wrong with you?”_ he yelled, shaking out his arms that were now soaked in milky liquid. Klaus saw the lady in the gold was cackling, clearly enjoying the spectacle. 

“What should I do next?” Ben called back across the road, tipping the same cop’s hat off his head again. He rounded the circle, positioning his hand directly under the remaining tall cop’s cup of coffee, remaining completely unseen. 

“One, two -” Ben said loudly for Klaus’ entertainment. “Three!”

He smacked his hand hard into the cup, sending coffee spraying up into the tall cop’s face. He coughed and spluttered, coffee dripping from his moustache. 

Klaus bit his knuckles, laughing. Allison had her hand over her mouth too. Even Ray looked amused now that he knew what was going on.

Both women were now laughing, having been able to put some space between them and the police while the men had been distracted. 

_”Hey, what are you laughing at?”_ the fair haired cop shouted fiercely. His hand went to his baton, but Ben was faster, yanking the other end of the baton hard enough through the loop on his belt for the man to twist. Ben let go abruptly, letting him stumble into the wall. 

The cop straightened himself up, looking over his shoulder distractedly. Klaus watched as his brother left him alone to slip the cuffs off the tall cop’s belt, looping one end gently around the belt loop at the back of his pants. He held the chain in the middle so that it wouldn’t pull, desperately trying to stretch the other end so he could reach the loop on his partner’s trousers. 

“What is he doing now?” Allison hissed. Klaus turned back to her with a giggle, holding a hand up for her to wait and see. 

Ben was still trying to make the chain stretch when the fair-haired cop spun around again, still looking for whatever had been weighing down on his baton. He bumped into the tall cop, nudging him close enough that Ben could loop the cuffs easily on to his partner’s pants.

Klaus fell back against the door of the phone booth, laughing silently. 

“Oh no, what’s he done?” Ray asked, sounding more like he was eagerly anticipating Ben’s antics than he had before. 

Ben slipped the baton from the belt of the tall cop’s partner, throwing it onto the road. It clattered loudly, making the men jump, but not far enough that they noticed the cuffs. 

_“Something weird’s going on,”_ the fat cop said, looking around the street. The cop who had lost his baton scampered into the street to collect it. 

_”They do say this place is haunted,”_ the woman in the gold dress jeered, pointing to the theatre. “C’mon Daphne, let’s roll.” She took the other woman’s arm in her own, tugging her away. 

”Hey!” the mouthy one with the fair hair shouted threateningly. _”You can’t go anywhere until we say you can go anywhere,” he said, jabbing his finger in the shorter woman’s face. “We were arresting you.”_

_”More like you were having a good look at what you weren’t going to pay for,”_ she snapped back, looking him up and down with a sneer.

The cop’s face morphed into a rabid snarl. Klaus heard Ray hiss behind him. It wasn’t feeling as funny anymore. 

The cop lunged for the shorter woman right as Ben kicked out his ankles from under him. The man face planted heavily into the pavement, barely getting a hand out in time to stop himself. The women took the opportunity to duck out from their alcove, teetering down the street as fast as they could in their heels. The tall cop made to give chase, but took off too fast, pulling on the handcuff strapped to his belt loop.

Klaus expected the tall cop to stumble or fall or for the two cops to find themselves stuck. 

He did not expect the cop’s pants to rip cleanly front to back, exposing his (far too) tighty whities.

Ben cackled while Klaus clamped his hands firmly over his mouth, face scrunched up with laughter.

“Klaus! Did you see that?” his brother shouted to him. Klaus nodded, tears forming in his eyes from laughing. 

The last cop was looking around at the theatre, feet jittery and hands held out to shield himself. 

_”I think we better get out of here,_ ” he said, a definite shake to his voice. Ben leaned over him from behind, making ghost hands over his head.

“Oooooooh, I am the ghost of Christmas past!” he said in his spookiest voice. The cop couldn’t hear him - it was all for his brother. Klaus wiped his eyes, wished that Allison and Ray could see him without revealing him to the police that he was tormenting. 

Klaus waved at his brother with a grin, pointing to the theatre, then covering one side of his face with his hand. Ben scrunched up his nose, watching his brother.

“What are you doing? Braveheart?” Ben called back before kicking at the bins lined up at the shop next door, the deafening noise sending the cops scampering back the other way, eyes wide with fear. Klaus shook his head, pointing at the theatre again, then repeating the action covering his face. Ben rolled his eyes, picking up a bin lid and throwing it like a frisbee just inches away from the fat cop’s head. The man let out a high-pitched cry and hid behind the tall cop. 

“Klaus, I have no idea what you are doing,” Ben said, reaching into the window of the police cruiser the cops had parked a few shops down and flicking on the sirens. The cops jumped back from the wailing car, all four of them looking suitably convinced that they were being haunted, which Klaus guessed they technically were. Ben ducked into a small laneway, only a gap really between two shops, emerging with a victorious chuckle and the end of a garden hose in his hands. 

The soaking wet cops ran for their lives down the street, chased by Ben for the twenty yards he could reach until the hose was too short. He turned the water off then sauntered back to Klaus, Allison and Ray, looking very satisfied with himself. 

“Nice show,” Ray said with a chuckle, his gaze missing Ben by about a foot. Allison rolled her eyes, throwing an arm around Klaus’ shoulders as they headed down the street.

They took their cold fried chicken back to the car, Ben sitting in the back with Klaus who had his Ouija board in his lap and was frustratedly pointing out letters.

“Oh, the theatre, I get it,” Ben said, nodding, copying Klaus’ action from before with his hand over his face. “Yeah, Phantom of the Opera was probably a more appropriate ghoul.” 

Klaus mouthed an emphatic _thank you_ , slumping back in his seat.

**********

Life was pretty good for Klaus in the Chestnut House. Ray had taken him past his little one-room flat the next day to collect his few meagre belongings, not batting an eyelid at his gaudy assortment of clothing or his garbage bag full of wool and knitting needles that he relied on when the cravings started to hit. With everything important packed up, it only took up a third of Ray’s trunk, Klaus not being one to stay anywhere long enough to acquire a lot of possessions.

After what had been a week since the day he stumbled into Allison and Ray’s shed (although it had felt a lot longer), Ray called the doctor back to check on how Klaus’ arm and throat healing, and to take the stitches out from his brow. There was a red line still remaining where the skin had knitted back together, but Klaus was pleased to see that the join was thin, which from experience meant that it would eventually fade. Doctor Groen removed the splint, making Klaus wince at the smell and the way his skin had begun to flake underneath it. He was sent off to wash it before the doctor reset it in a less-rigid manner, more relying on the bandages to keep it in line than the heavy metal braces that had been weighing his arm down. He only put one of the flat rods back in, for which Klaus was grateful. 

He checked the bruises on his back and poked at Klaus’ ribs, seemingly satisfied with how they were healing, although with the man’s deadpan expression it was hard to tell. 

The doctor looked down Klaus’ throat with a popsicle stick and a torch, then pressed at the bruises around his neck. While it wasn’t comfortable, he wasn’t in the same agony he was a week earlier. 

He declared that Klaus could start with some soft talking for five minutes per day only, increasing the time by two minutes precisely every day. 

“As if we’ll be able to shut you up again once you start,” Ben teased. Klaus glared at him across the living room, aware the doctor was still sitting in the chair opposite him. 

Ben had been enjoying his time at the Chestnut House too from what Klaus could gather. With his fever fully recovered, Klaus had been able to make Ben corporeal and visible for hours at a time, leaving his brother free to roam the house as he pleased.

Klaus was lying on the couch, flicking through a gossip magazine (secretly loving the conservative scandals that filled the pages) when Allison walked in, drying her hair.

“Have you seen Ray?” she asked. Klaus tilted his head and gave her a look.

“Stupid question. He’s upstairs with Ben, isn’t he?” 

Klaus nodded. Ray and Ben had bonded over their shared love of classic literature, which had led to them pulling out a box that had been stored in Klaus’ room of all of Ray’s old college books. They’d been up there for hours. 

Klaus returned to page nineteen to read about _How to get the attention of that man_ which included tips on which nail colours signalled you were interested and which ones told that you were taken. Klaus looked down at his own purple toenails and checked the colour chart which pinned him as a _loose woman who is sending the message that she is easy to get_. Klaus wiggled his toes with a chuckle. 

Allison headed back to the bathroom, the hair dryer ringing out a moment later. Klaus turned to the knitting patterns at the back and studied the cute pattern for a crocheted halter top. 

There was a sharp knock at the door. Klaus lay the magazine down open on the coffee table, not wanting to lose the pattern and danced over to answer it, the tune of some random song by a boy band song from the future running circles in his head.

He opened the door to be greeted by three men with matching white-blonde hair that looked like they’d be more at home on a cruise ship in their white outfits. One of them was presenting a vacuum cleaner.

Klaus smiled widely and shook his head. Allison and Ray had a really good vacuum cleaner, he had used it the day before. He tried to give Ben a hickey on his neck with it but it seemed ghosts couldn’t bruise. 

The one at the front with his hair slicked back put his foot in the door. Klaus wet his lips, trying to ready himself to form the quiet words to say they didn’t need a vacuum when the one with the little sailor’s hat hit him in the throat. Klaus gasped, hands flying to where he’d been hit as the sailor shoved him to the ground, straddling him with his knees. The one with the wild eyes who had been holding the vacuum pressed his boot into Klaus’ chest, pinning him to the carpet. He struggled, trying to scream out for the others but all that came out was a hoarse whine. The sailor pulled out a knife from his boot. 

Klaus knew that knife. Klaus would know that knife anywhere. 

That was one of Diego’s knives.

The man stabbed the knife towards Klaus’ injured arm, only just nicking the skin at the crook of his arm as he dragged the blade down the bandage, slicing it in half. Klaus watched in horror as the man searched his forearm, finding the umbrella tattoo.

He said something over his shoulder to the leader in what Klaus recognised as Swedish. 

It took a second for him to translate, but he thought he had it.

_He’s one of them_.

These guys were after the Umbrella Academy. 

Klaus made the most of the momentary distraction to whip the knife out of the sailor’s loose grip and stab it into the other man’s calf. He howled in pain, releasing his chest while Klaus flipped the sailor off him with a well practiced move to flip a straddling man. He crawled on hands and knees, his wrist and arm smarting at the movement without the protection of the brace. He felt a hand close around his ankle and tug hard, dragging him along his stomach. He reached out and grabbed the hall table, hoping that the sound would alert the others. 

The leader picked up Klaus by the back of his shirt and threw him into the living room. He landed hard on his back just in time to look up and see the gun that the man had pointed in his face.

Everyone always underestimated how long Klaus’ legs were. 

In a swift movement, he braced his arse off the floor, swinging his long legs at the man’s hand. His foot connected with the gun, sending it flying into the couch. The man watched it fly away before flipping the glass coffee table onto Klaus, buying him the time he needed to grab the gun. Klaus kicked his limbs out to protect him from the piece of furniture which thankfully didn’t break. He scrambled out from under it, leaping onto the leader’s back just as his hand reached for the gun wedged between the couch cushions. 

He held on tight, not wanting a repeat of what happened at the rave, although the carpet was softer than the concrete floor. The man slammed himself back into the wall, sandwiching Klaus and slamming his head into the plaster. Klaus felt himself slipping and fought to hold on when the man spun around and slammed him again. This time Klaus let go, falling in a heap on the ground. The man was holding a hunting knife which he had pulled out from who knows where. He turned the blade downwards, lifting it to swing down into Klaus’ chest when he was struck in the head by a swinging vacuum cleaner. 

Allison put the weapon down, rushing to help Klaus up to his feet. Klaus sighed in relief, grabbing onto his sister. Now there were two of them, one of which could actually kick arse, unlike his own unrefined lucky fighting technique.

The wild eyed one came at them, sent staggering sideways over the glass coffee table with Allison’s high kick. The table did break this time, glass shattering across the carpet. Klaus picked up a heavy orange lamp from next to the couch and smashed it over his head. 

He didn’t see sailor-boy coming up behind him, hitting him with a sharp kick to the centre of his spine. Klaus fell forward, cutting his hands in the broken glass while trying to scramble away from the guy he’d hit with the lamp, who was _still moving_.

“Who are these guys?” Allison called out over her shoulder, blocking a punch from the leader. Klaus threw his hands in the air in an exaggerated shrug, ducking a swing from the sailor.

He turned to hit him when he felt something cold press into the back of his head followed by the unmistakable click of a gun. He froze still, on his knees, looking up at the sneering sailor. 

He thought about Dave. Maybe the little girl would let Klaus see him this time? Or would she, with Dave being still alive. He wasn’t sure how time went up there, whether it meant the same as it did down here. Even if he did, he could wait. He could wait a lifetime for Dave. 

He could hear the smack of limb-on-limb which meant Allison was still fighting behind him. They weren’t here to bargain or use Klaus as a hostage. They were here to kill them. 

Just as the gun pressed harder into Klaus’ head and he closed his eyes, he heard a new voice cry out. He opened his eyes to see Ray come thundering in from the kitchen, mouth wide as he took in the scene. 

“Ray, get out of here!” Allison shouted. There was a smack and a crash.

“Allison!” Ray shouted, rushing forwards. The sailor pulled out his own gun, pointing it at Ray’s back. 

Klaus wouldn’t get out of range of the first gun in time, but he knew he could knock the sailor’s gun off course. He had seen the love of his life shot in front of him. He would never let that happen to his sister. 

He took a quick breath. He was ready to jump . . .

A chilling growl echoed through the room - a room that wasn’t big enough for an echo.

He knew that sound.

He let his eyes flick down to see that his hands were glowing blue.

Klaus felt the pressure at the back of his head release. He dared to slowly turn around. 

Standing at the other end of the room was Ben, glowing more brightly than Klaus had ever managed. His face was like steel. 

Everyone froze, Allison standing in the centre of the room holding a vacuum attachment like a knife, facing off against the leader who still had his knife. Ray was tucked behind Allison’s back, fists curled and ready.

The wild eyed one stood next to Klaus, gun still in hand while he could hear the heavy breathing of the sailor behind him. 

The eldritch monster called out again, its ear piercing cry flooding the room unnaturally. 

“Get away from them,” Ben said, his voice ancient and distant. 

The wild-eyed one shot at Ben, three rounds.

Bam-bam-bam. 

Ben looked down at his chest, lifting up his shirt to reveal untouched skin. He slowly raised his head, locking eyes with the gunman. 

A click and Klaus felt the sailor’s gun against the side of his head. 

“No!” Allison shouted, reaching helplessly towards Klaus. 

Ahh, so he _was_ a clever one. Can’t kill a ghost, but sure as hell can kill his living brother. 

Klaus raised his blue hands, locking eyes with Ben. 

He gave him a wink. 

The eldritch’s tentacle shot out from Ben’s chest so fast Klaus barely had time to duck before it bulleted over his head. He turned around to see the blue glowing appendage withdraw from the sailor’s stomach with a sickening slurp, leaving behind a perfectly circular hole and splattering blood across Klaus’ face. 

There were more shots. Klaus turned to see another tentacle join the first to tear the trigger happy one with the wild eyes in two, spilling blood liberally across the rug. 

The leader howled with a pain that curdled Klaus’ blood. These men must have meant something to him, Klaus thought. He looked around the room once more before staggering to the door. 

“Let him go,” Allison sighed, sucking in another deep breath. Ben nodded, calling the tentacles back in like a retractable vacuum cord. 

Ben picked his way over the rubble to help him up. Klaus smiled, patting Ben on the shoulder, then winced as he felt the bruises from the fight start to make themselves known. 

“Oh _sweet_ Jesus!” Ray finally gasped after a considerable delay, holding onto Allison as if it was the only thing holding him standing. To be honest, Klaus thought, it probably was. 

He pointed to Ben, then to the two dead assassins, then back to Ben before turning to Allison, who made gentle shushing noises. 

“I thought I was the one who lost my voice,” Klaus said in a harsh whisper, dissolving into coughs. That arsehole didn’t have to hit him in the throat _again_. 

Allison lowered Ray into the armchair, quickly covering up a bloodstain with a cushion. 

“So you know how we all have powers, honey -” Allison said slowly, like she was talking to a child. All the Hargreeves siblings had been subjected to that tone of voice at some point. “- well, this is Ben’s power.”

“What, he has the Creature from the Black Lagoon in -” Ray motioned towards his stomach, his face horror struck. 

“Hello,” Ben waved, his hand joined by a small tentacle that fed its way out from under his top. Allison clicked her tongue.

“Do you have to?” she reprimanded, tilting her head towards her traumatised husband. Klaus giggled, being the responsible one for once and pushing the stray tentacle playfully back down out of sight. It disappeared under Ben’s t-shirt with a slurp.

“At least I’m not the one covered in blood this time,” Ben said, dragging a finger through the sticky mess coating the side of Klaus’ cheek. Klaus scrunched up his nose, pushing away Ben’s hand.

The living room filled with a bright blue light that made Ray scream at an incredibly high pitch. 

Landing next to the fireplace was Diego who had evidently embraced his inner Antonio Banderas and a small man with square glasses and a briefcase. 

“Diego!” Allison cried, rushing towards her brother but Klaus beat her, tackling him like a koala. 

“Urg, what is _that_ in your hair?” Diego asked, wriggling out of Klaus’ grip. Klaus pointed to Ben. He watched as Diego’s eyes softened, looking at his blue-glowing brother. 

“Ben?”

Klaus could see Ben wanted to fire back a snarky reply but he didn’t get the chance before Diego wrapped him up in a tight hug. 

“Urg, you’re going to squeeze me to death,” he said, winding his own arms around Diego. Their stabby-brother released him, turning to Allison who drew him into her own tight hug. 

Once they had released each other, Allison pointed to Ray.

“Ray, this is one of our other brothers, Diego. Diego, this is Ray, my husband.” Klaus laughed as Diego’s eyes bugged out. 

“Nice to meet you,” Ray said distantly, gazing at the destroyed living room. Diego looked around the room, taking in the mutilated bodies. He rolled up his sleeves. 

“So are we burning or burying?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this should have been the final chapter, but then I was like, why not chuck Diego in?


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego and Klaus catch up. Team Zero get back together but the apocalypse is still on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so with the spanner in the works of Diego turning up (what was I thinking?) I've had to rejig the ending, but I think I like this new ending more.
> 
> All the cannon events are completely out of order because this is fiction and I can.

Diego had already had a pretty big day. He’d been drugged by his maybe girlfriend, kidnapped, taken outside time and space to The Commission headquarters, found out the cause of the new apocalypse and time travelled by briefcase with a tiny man called Herb.

Then he landed in his sister’s living room which looked like an abattoir to be reunited with three of his siblings, one of which he never thought he’d be able to see again. 

Those bloody Swedes again. One of them had stolen a couple of his knives.

Herb flashed away with the offer of organising a clean up crew. Diego had no idea how they were going to restore the room to any sort of livable condition. A man was torn in half on the sofa.

The little guy had been pretty handy so far though. He’d obviously been watching their movements since they landed in the timeline. He knew exactly where Allison was living when Diego asked. 

As soon as he saw the events that led to the new apocalypse, he knew Allison would be the only one that could help. Last time made it pretty clear that the brothers in the family were fairly useless with calm, level headed, well thought out plans. 

“Um, we’re going to go get cleaned up,” Allison said, guiding her traumatised husband through the living room. Diego gave him a nod to say hi but the man didn’t respond, too busy staring at the intestines splattered over the wallpaper. 

Klaus clicked his fingers to get Allison’s attention, pointing to himself and motioning to all the gore covering him. He definitely got the worst of it. The blood was streaked away from his eyes where he had obviously wiped it away, but his long hair was still completely matted with bits of Swedish assassin.

“Nu-uh,” Allison said, pushing Ray through the doorway. “There is no way I’m taking a shower after you. We’re going first.” 

Klaus stomped his foot, folding his arms in a huff. Diego laughed. 

“What’s with the no talking? Have you joined a cult and taken a vow of silence?”

Klaus scowled at him, flipping him the finger. 

“Well, funny you should say that . . .” Ben started, cut off by an angry shove from Klaus. He glared at Ben, a silent threat communicated between them.

“So what really happened?” Diego asked, twirling a knife that he never remembered pulling out of his pocket. Ben sighed, turning away from Klaus.

“Klaus got into some trouble with some arsehole cops last week who took the Luther approach,” Ben said, motioning to his own neck with his hands.

“They choked him?” Diego asked, turning Klaus around roughly by the shoulders. His brother hissed, slapping at Diego’s hands. It was impossible to see Klaus’ skin through all the blood. It must have been pretty bad to stop _Klaus_ talking.

Diego turned back to Ben, still holding onto Klaus’ shoulders.

“Who were they?”

Ben shook his head. “Just some cops. They’re all the same around here.”

Diego looked at Klaus, staring at his eyes. They looked normal enough, he could still see the ring of bright green and his pupils seemed a normal size.

“You’re not back on that shit, are you?” he asked. Klaus shook his head firmly. 

From the serious set expression on his brother’s face, he could tell. He was telling the truth.

“Why were the cops hassling you then?”

Klaus looked back at Ben, who answered on his behalf.

“They’re not very keen on those that stand out around here, especially those of the non-straight persuasion.”

Wait. What?

“They hurt you because you like guys?”

Klaus nodded, running a hand through his hair then instantly regretting it. He scrunched up his face, looking for somewhere to wipe the gunk from his hand. Diego jumped back.

“No way, don’t even think about wiping that shit on me.” 

He watched his skinny brother cleaned his hand on the couch, avoiding the top half of the assassin’s body that was propped up like some kind of mannequin. 

Diego hadn’t enjoyed being thrown back in the past, especially when he ended up landed in an asylum, but he couldn’t imagine what it was like for Klaus. When he found out that they’d all been scattered across the early sixties, he’d just assumed Klaus had been partying it up, trying out every psychedelic drug the sixties had to offer. He never considered how hard it would be to be Klaus.

It hadn’t been great for him, either. He’d copped his own fair share of crap for the colour of his skin, especially from those who had accused him of being Cuban (not that he actually knew where he really came from), which wasn’t unexpected so far south the year after the Missile Crisis. Still, he wasn’t used to this brand of racism, the name calling, the blatant discrimination written on signs in shops, the clear divisions between white and other. 

He thought of Allison too. He’d seen the way folk treated black people around these parts. Just the other day there had been a riot caused by some sort of protest with images of police bashing black people in the streets. He hoped that Allison was no-where near all that.

Just at that moment, his sister emerged from the kitchen wearing a bathrobe and a towel wound around her hair, a large plaster sticking out from under it over her forehead and a pink bruise starting to form on her jaw. Klaus pointed at the towel.

“I know, I’d just washed and styled it too,” she sighed. She flashed Diego a wide grin. 

“Love the long hair, D.”

Diego rolled his eyes, dodging Klaus’ long fingers as he tried to touch it.

“Not until you get cleaned up, bro,” he said, pointing towards the doorway Allison had emerged from. 

Klaus dropped his shoulders, dragging himself off to the bathroom. Ben followed after him, muttering something about making sure he didn’t pass out in the shower. 

“Don’t get completely dressed afterwards either,” Allison called after him. “We are disinfecting those cuts so you don’t get sick again.”

“He got sick?” Diego asked. Allison nodded, leaning against the doorframe. 

“Yeah, a cut on his head got infected. You know what he’s like, virtually no immune system.”

Diego huffed, nodding. It wasn’t exactly true, Klaus lived in some pretty rough conditions over the years and must have built up some tolerance to all the germs to be able to stay alive. It was more like he would ignore the symptoms until suddenly he was too sick to move. 

“I better get up to Ray, see how he’s coping,” Allison said with a dubious look, pushing off the doorframe. “Call me down when Klaus is out.”

“That’s okay, I can sort him out.”

“You sure?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah, I got this. You go sort out upstairs.”

“Okay, I left the kit out on the bench.” She turned to leave before stopping and turning back. “Diego?”

“Yeah?”

She smiled in a way that reached her warm brown eyes. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too, Ally.”

Diego knocked on the bathroom door, praying that Klaus actually had a towel on. He was surprised to see Ben open it. 

“Klaus, the nurse is here for your sponge bath.”

Diego scrunched up his nose, flicking Ben in the forehead. He couldn’t help but smile when his nail actually made contact. 

“Ghosts don’t feel pain, dickhead,” Ben deadpanned, flicking him back. Diego grabbed him in a headlock, squeezing him in in a disguised hug. 

“Urg, you’re Luthering me!” Ben protested, but he wasn’t fighting very hard to get out of Diego’s grip. He released his ghost brother, grinning widely. 

“I’ve missed you bro.”

Ben grinned back shyly. “Missed you too. Finally this dickwad got sober enough for me to see you guys.”

Klaus poked his tongue out from his position perched on a stool, towel tied around his waist. He had his wet curls tied back in a bun. His legs were crossed, his fingers picking at the blood under his nails. 

“C’mon, let’s get this done,” Diego said, sitting on the edge of the bath so that the kit on the vanity was in reach. He dragged his brother, stool and all closer so he could reach. 

“I’ll give you a break for a bit, yeah?” Ben said, looking down at Klaus. His brother shook his head, mouthing _I’m fine_.

“Yeah, that’s what you said last time. I’ll come back in a bit.”

Ben passed Klaus a small Ouija board, then disappeared from sight. Diego felt a pang at his loss, but he was right - Klaus looked exhausted. And he said he would be back, didn’t he?

Diego pointed to the board in Klaus’ hands. “Where did you get that from?”

Klaus pointed to three letters, spelling out R-A-Y. 

“Ray huh? He’s a good guy?” 

Klaus nodded emphatically, smiling. He must have been pretty good to impress Klaus. His brother dated some absolute scumbags over the years and could probably spot one a mile off. There was no way any of the Hargreeves would let one of their own near another arsehole, especially after what happened with Vanya. 

He thought about Five’s reaction to Lila. He would flip his lid once he found out what she did. 

Maybe it was his way of showing he cared?

Diego chuckled to himself. Nah.

He dabbed some old-branded antiseptic on a cotton pad. 

“Can’t believe Allison got married, that was quick.”

Klaus showed him two fingers, then spelt out Y-E-A-R-S.

“They’ve been married for two years?” he burst out. Diego had only been in Dallas for a few months. 

Klaus shook his head, holding up one finger.

“Okay, married for one year, but she’s been here for two?” 

His brother nodded. Diego started cleaning the small cuts on Klaus’ head, noticing a newly healed one over his brow. 

“Er, how about you?”

Klaus held up three fingers. 

“Three years?” Holy shit, his brother had been wandering around this timeline on his own for three years.

Klaus pointed out B-E-N on the board.

“Ben was with you?” 

He nodded. At least that was something, his brother wasn’t completely alone. Diego remembered how he felt when he landed, how desperate he was to latch onto some sort of purpose, and it had landed him in the mental hospital. He was glad that Klaus had Ben with him. 

Diego arranged Klaus’ hands palms-up in his lap. The cuts were a bit worse here, but had stopped bleeding at least. He felt through the grazes for the tiny pieces of glass stuck in the cuts and picked them out with the little tweezers from the kit before he dabbed more antiseptic onto them, noticing Klaus didn’t even wince. He did get the bloody things tattooed, Diego remembered, then shuddered at the thought of the needles . . .

He cleaned a slightly deeper cut near Klaus’ elbow, rotating his arm to get a better angle. Klaus winced, pulling his arm back.

“Sorry,” Diego said, taking his arm again much more gently. He noticed that his skin was irritated and there were old bruises along his forearm. 

“What’s going on here?” he asked, motioning towards his injured limb. Klaus spelled out S-P-L-I-N-T with his other hand, pointing to the bruises. 

“Why did you take it off?” 

Klaus rolled his eyes, then reached over to grab a knife out of Diego’s holster hidden into his belt. His breath hitched as he watched his brother bring the knife towards his arm, but before he could stop him, Klaus merely used it to demonstrate cutting off an invisible splint, then pointed to the umbrella tattoo on his arm, then used the knife to point angrily to the living room. 

“It got cut off in the fight?”

Klaus rolled his eyes and shrugged, handing back the weapon. Diego had it wrong, but it seemed like it was close enough for Klaus. 

“Alright, do you think Allison can redo it? Does she know how it went?” 

Klaus tilted his head side to side, almost nodding. 

Diego disinfected an angry graze on Klaus’ chest, then spun his brother around on the stool. Klaus yelped, arms flailing. 

There were long bruises across Klaus’ back, but they looked old. 

“These from the cops too?” Diego asked, tracing them with his finger. Klaus nodded. He spotted a mangled-looking scar, just below his shoulder blade and prodded it.

“What about this?”

Klaus twisted around to point a finger gun. 

“When did you get shot?” Diego demanded, louder than he had intended. Klaus just tapped the tattoo on his left shoulder. 

Of course, Klaus had time travelled before to the Vietnam War, but he never said anything about being shot. He never said much at all about it, except that he lost someone . . . 

Diego was interrupted from his thoughts by Klaus tapping on his Ouija board. 

O-T-H-E-R-S

“Yeah, we found the others.” 

Klaus’ face lit up as he turned around on the stool. Diego pushed him facing back the other way so that he could pick a tiny piece of glass out from the back of his hip. 

“If you sit still, I’ll tell you.” 

Klaus huffed, slouching on the stool. Diego manhandled him into a straighter position so that he could get the glass.

“They’re all back staying at this guy’s shop that we’re staying at.” Diego thought of Elliot. Poor bastard. “Five, Vanya, Luther and me all met up a few days ago.”

Klaus held up the board over his shoulder, pointing to the V.

“Yeah, Vanya’s fine. Well, she doesn’t actually remember any of it, she doesn’t remember anything about who we are or the Umbrella Academy . . . “

Klaus turned around, wide eyed. 

“Amnesia or some shit,” Diego continued. Klaus looked over to the vanity, nodding thoughtfully.

Ah, so Ben was sitting there. All this time they thought Klaus had some sort of side effect from all the drug use with his flinching and looking into deep space, when it was just Ben. 

Klaus puffed his chest out, then gave Diego a querying look.

“Was that meant to be Luther?” At Klaus’ sulky nod, he chuckled and continued. “Yeah, he’s some sort of cage fighter or something. Really embraced the gorilla bod.” 

Klaus grinned at that, exchanging some sort of in-joke with Ben. Diego felt around the cut to make sure he couldn’t feel the hard, sharp edges of any glass, then disinfected it and slapped a dressing over the top. He had to tape it down, apparently they hadn’t yet heard of flexible adhesive dressings in 1963. 

He took out Klaus’ hair elastic to check his head. Klaus tried to pull away, but Diego grabbed the unmarked parts of his shoulders and pushed him back down.

“If I had to get my stomach cauterised with a curling iron, you can sit here for five minutes while I check your head, although I don’t know why I’m bothering because there’s nothing in it.” 

He heard Klaus groan then he crossed his arms uncomfortably over his chest. 

“So Five’s back, and he says there’s another apocalypse.”

Klaus’ body tensed, his shoulders hunching forwards. 

Diego’s fingers found a large egg at the back of Klaus’ skull. He hissed, pulling away and covering the back of his head with his hands.

“Let me see you idiot, gotta see if you have glass in there or need it stitched. We wouldn’t want to have to shave your hair off,” he teased.

Diego could only imagine the scowl on Klaus’ face. 

It wasn’t bleeding but it was that swollen that Diego was surprised Klaus didn’t have a concussion. Or maybe he did. He could barely tell with Klaus what was normal and what wasn’t.

“C’mon, get dressed and we’ll get Allison to do your arm, then I’ll tell you all about it.”

Klaus sat at the kitchen table next to Allison as she restrapped the hideous metal rod back to his arm, tying it on with bits of cloth to replace the brace that had been cut away then securing the whole thing with a bulky mess of bandages. Diego sat opposite, twirling his knife that had been stolen in his hand. He had been upset when he couldn’t find the second knife that he’d lost, but cheered up considerably when he realised he wasn’t going to have to do any more body disposals.

True to his word, the little Commission guy (Hank? Herb?) blipped back with a clean up team who got to work straight away in the living room. 

“Does that feel right?” Allison asked, tucking the end of the bandage in near his wrist. Klaus moved his arm around and nodded. She’d used double the bandages, but it had the same effect. 

The Commission man tiptoed timidly into the kitchen, folding his hands over each other. 

“How’s it going Herb?” Diego asked jovially, like his best mate had just entered the room. Herb stood up a bit straighter, smiling more.

“Hey Diego, Allison, Klaus,” he said, a nod punctuating each greeting. “I’m sorry to be a pain, but it might be best if you guys headed out for a bit while we do this next part. It can just get a little messy and noisy,” he added, with a wince.

“That’s fine,” Diego piped up, smiling ( _smiling?_ ) at Herb. “We were just about to get out of your hair anyway.”

“We were?” Allison asked, her eyes fliting upstairs where Ray must have still been hiding.

Diego stood up, pocketing the knife. “Time to get Team Zero back together.”

Klaus exchanged a quizzical look with Allison. What was Team Zero?

A short drive later Diego directed Allison to park in a familiar looking alley. 

“This is where we landed,” said Ben from his position squeezed between Klaus and Ray in the back seat. Ray was still looking dazed, although at least he was looking around and seemingly taking things in now. 

Klaus nodded in recognition. He hadn’t been back to that alleyway in two and a half years. At first, he and Ben had been checking to see if they could find any clues to where their siblings were, but after a while, Klaus gave up.

Diego led them into an old electronics shop with a grand foyer. 

“Allison.”

Klaus looked up to the balcony that created a mezzanine level above the shop with stairs on either side. Luther was standing there, mouth agape. Five blipped into view followed by Vanya, her eyes also fixed on Allison. 

“I have a sister,” she said in a voice so unlike her own. It sounded - hopeful. 

Klaus threw his hands out with a flourish, pointing to himself. Did no-one care that he was back? 

Five zapped his way downstairs, Luther and Vanya left to run down the staircases on either side. Five shook his hand like the old man he was, then gave Allison a brief hug. As soon as Vanya hit the bottom floor, Allison raced to her, hugging her sister with tears streaming down her face. Luther stood back awkwardly, then turned to Klaus, eyeing Ray who was forgotten at the back of the group. 

“Good to see you buddy,” Luther said, giving Klaus a tight squeeze. Klaus smiled back. As much as things had been left on not-great terms between himself and Numero Uno, he had missed him. He’d missed all of them. 

Luther eyed him strangely before looking over at Ray again. Klaus suppressed a giggle at the awkward show that was about to start. 

“Who’s this?” Luther asked Klaus, Allison still wrapped up with Vanya. 

Klaus pointed to his ring finger, tilting his head to Allison.

“You got married?” Luther gasped, pointing to Klaus. Klaus burst out in silent laughter, looking over at a scandalised Ray.

“Oh no man, you got that all wrong,” Ray said, holding his hands out. “I’m married to _Allison_.”

If Ray was expecting Luther to look less shocked, he was disappointed. Allison had just caught the last of the conversation, her head moving between looking at Luther and Ray. 

“Get me some popcorn,” Ben said, sitting on the back of an armchair. Klaus laughed again, shaking his head. 

“You . . . you got married?” Luther asked, jaw still hanging. Allison rolled her eyes briefly, then plastered on a wide smile, looping her arm through Ray’s.

“Last spring. Everyone, this is Ray. Ray, these are the rest of my siblings. Vanya, Five and Luther - and I guess you didn’t really get to meet Diego properly before.”

Vanya beamed up at Ray, waving happily. Five stepped forward to shake his hand while Diego gave him a quick very manly hug. Luther stepped forward uncertainly, shaking Ray’s hand in his own huge gorilla one.

“Wow, this isn’t awkward at all,” Ben deadpanned, suddenly visible next to Klaus. 

“Ben?” Five gasped, showing the most emotion he had since they had reunited. He threw his skinny little arms around Ben’s glowing blue body. As soon as he stepped back, Luther took over, no longer distracted by Allison and her husband. 

Klaus walked over to Vanya, picking her up in a one-armed hug. She squeaked, giggling as Klaus spun her around and put her back down with a stumble. 

“What happened to you?” Five asked, his eyes scrutinising from Klaus’ bandaged arm to his high-necked top. Klaus gestured for Ben to explain. 

“Homophobic cops sprung him at a gay bar and now he can only talk for like seven minutes a day.”

“Why can’t he talk?” Luther asked, confused. Klaus rolled his eyes, pulling down the collar of his top a bit. The bruises had gotten a lot better, but there were still purple smudges on his throat. He’d also noticed a new red mark after his shower from where the Swede had hit him. Why always the throat? 

Vanya gasped.

“The cops did that to you?” 

Klaus nodded, then shrugged. 

“So I guess there is a way to silence that voice in your head that screams to be the centre of attention,” Five quipped, glancing at Luther. Their Number One flushed bright red. Klaus flipped Five the finger. 

“I didn’t mean . . . I . . .” Luther said, looking over to Ben. Klaus flipped his hand with a smile. He whipped the Ouija board out from where it was tucked into the back of his pants and shuffled over to Luther, spelling out the word P-A-S-T. 

Luther glared at the board for a minute, working out what Klaus was doing, then let a small smile relax over his face. 

“C’mon, enough chit chat. I’ve got something to tell you all,” Diego said, waving everyone upstairs. 

Upstairs, sitting around on a range of mismatched retro furniture that Klaus was _so_ going to use in his own place, if he ever actually got his own place, or a stable enough job to save enough money to actually buy furniture. Except for that dentist chair in the corner - it didn’t really fit the aesthetic. Five had poured them all coffee, Allison sweetly making Klaus a hot cocoa after he couldn’t get the lid off the milk bottle with his heavily bandaged arm. 

It turned out that Diego’s news was that he had been at The Commission after being kidnapped by his kinda-girlfriend Lila (depending on who you asked). Klaus clapped his hand against his thigh at this news, giving Diego a thumbs up. She sounded just the right sort of crazy for him. That is, completely bat-shit, just broke out of an asylum brand of crazy. 

At The Commission, Diego had used some weird machine with Herb to find out what caused the second apocalypse. 

“Vanya?” Allison said, shaking her head.

“Again?” Ben had added, forgetting that he could now be heard. He looked over at their sister sheepishly. 

“How?” Vanya asked in a small voice. She still looked timid and small, but there was a new confidence to her. Her shoulders were less hunched, her shirt less dull. Klaus liked it. 

“At the FBI Building. You go all glowy and smash the place apart. I saw you flying.”

Everyone’s eyes widened. Ray got up to pour himself another cup of coffee. 

“But, we can stop it from happening. You said she was on her own, if we stick together, then we can stop it,” Allison said, looking over at Five.

Five took a sip of his coffee, then leaned forward over his knees. “Technically we can, but we are still making the apocalypse likely to happen just by being here. We don’t belong in this timeline. We need a way to get back.”

“What, like a briefcase? I can just ask Herb for one,” Diego said, like he was asking Herb for help on his homework.

Five shook his head. “No, there’s no way the Handler will let those briefcases out of her sight without tracking them. She’ll know exactly what we’re doing. She won’t give up on the apocalypse that easily.”

Klaus heard a faint clunk from the other room. No-one else reacted, so he went back to sipping his cocoa. 

“Why don’t you ask your girlfriend for a case?” Luther asked to be cut off by Diego.

“She’s not my girlfriend!”

“What if we lure the Handler here?”

“What about JFK?”

His siblings had started to yell over one another, even Vanya who had apparently forgotten everything about their family and how they operated. Ray watched on, head turning from side to side like a spectator at a tennis match.

Klaus saw Five blip away out of the corner of his eye, noticing a flash of blue light through the glass doors of the other room. He exchanged a look with Ben, who was also watching him. Ben faded to ghost-mode, phasing through the doors. A moment later, their older-younger brother blipped into the kitchen, then crossed to the front door of the apartment.

“I’ll follow him,” Ben said, grabbing the back of Five’s blazer as he zapped out of sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's sneaky Five up to?
> 
> Next stop - action time!
> 
> PS I've written the last chapter and I'm so excited!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's some friction between two brothers. The Hargreeves try a different tactic, which creates unexpected consequences. 
> 
> Klaus entertains a crowd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha, this chapter got a little ridiculous but it was fun. 
> 
> I know I promised action, but I lied. It's next chapter.
> 
> A reminder, I've mixed up the cannon events and just left out the ones I don't care about. Hahaha it's fanfiction, what can you do?

Klaus had tried to stay awake, he really had, but after his sibling’s discussions dissolved into arguments he found himself drifting off on the couch. Luther got up to get into a heated discussion with Diego on the other side of the room, allowing Klaus to stretch out across the brown and orange striped seat, his long legs hanging over the arm. 

“What a day.” Ray sighed as he sat on the arm of the couch near Klaus’ head. Klaus nodded, rubbing his eyes that were itching with fatigue. 

“Is this normal?” Ray asked. Klaus twisted his body around to look at his four siblings all talking over the top of each other. He nodded tiredly. 

“Why don’t you go take a nap?” Ray said, tilting his head towards the room Five had been in earlier. Klaus shook his head. He had only just found all of his siblings again, he shouldn’t be closing himself off in the other room. That’s what old Klaus would have done, high or coming down or somewhere in between, never around when they needed him (not like they ever did). 

“C’mon, anyone can see you’re dead on your feet. Go take a nap. I’ll wake you up if anything important happens.”

Unable to stifle a yawn, Klaus nodded. He heaved himself up into a sitting position before shuffling into the other room, Ray softly sliding the doors closed behind him. The bed was unmade but Klaus didn’t care - he’d slept in worse places. He was out as soon as his head hit the pillow. 

After what felt like a minute but was probably a lot longer, Klaus heard someone saying his name. 

“Klaus? Hey, sorry. . .”

Klaus cracked his eyes open slowly, then jumped away from the hand touching his shoulder. He didn’t recognise the room at all with the coloured glass and the dark panelling and whose bed was he in and where the hell was he . . .

“Shh, Klaus, it’s just me - Ray.” 

Klaus scrambled upright, groaning as he remembered. He’d been having a nap, he wasn’t exactly sure where, but Ray was there. It was okay, it was all okay. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Ray said, the mattress sagging as he sat next to Klaus but not making any contact. 

Klaus rubbed his eyes again and shook his head, holding a hand out to apologise. 

He could hear raised voices out in the lounge area. He turned to Ray, who he could barely see silhouetted against the coloured window. It had gotten darker outside. He wondering how late it was. 

“I said I would wake you if they needed you, and I think they need you. Ben just got back with Five.”

Klaus threw back the blankets that he didn’t remember getting under and walked unsteadily to the door, still half asleep. He slid the doors open, aware of Ray following behind.

Standing in the middle of the lounge area were Five and Ben, both in the middle of a heated argument. The others stood around the edges, evidently in various states of shock. When he’d been alive, Ben _never_ argued with any of them, and to be honest, ever since Five came back, they rarely contested him either. He’d become the unofficial leader, the one who knew most about what was going on and the one to make their decisions. 

Here Ben was, shouting at him.

“You can’t do this Five, there is _no way_ that this is the best option!”

“Just as well it isn’t your decision to make!” Five fired back, his mouth widened into a snarl.

“So what, you’re just going to decide what’s best for us again and land us in another mess?” Ben challenged, folding his arms over his chest. 

“Hey! I had no choice! The world was ending!”

“So you’re going to commit mass murder?”

Luther jumped at Ben’s words.

“Now hold on . . .” he tried, but Five ignored him.

“That’s rich coming from you.”

Klaus stepped forward, a burning sensation surging through his chest. How _dare_ Five bring that up? Everyone knew that Ben didn’t want to kill. He didn’t ask for the monster in his body anymore than Klaus asked to see ghosts. He was only a kid, doing what their father made them.

Before Klaus got the chance to shove Five, Ben grinned maliciously. 

“Nice try, arsehole. Change the subject so we don’t see what’s really going on here. You know, everyone always says it’s Diego that has the hero complex, but it’s actually you.” Ben stepped up to Five who met him halfway, stretching himself to be the same height. Ben jabbed him in the chest. 

“ _You_ need to be the one to save the day, the one to solve the problems with all your stupid equations. You need to be the martyr. That’s why you want to do this, Five. It’s because deep down, you think you’re already so tainted that it’s your job to do the dirty work to save everyone else.”

“Fuck you,” Five snarled, his eyes flashing dangerously.

“What was that?” Ben taunted, his voice starting to echo. 

“I said _fuck you_. Who are you to say who it’s okay to kill and who it isn’t. Diego told me you slaughtered two guys from the Commission just this afternoon!” Five smiled manically, shaking his head. “Even when you’re dead, you can’t stop killing.”

“They were going to shoot Klaus!” Ben fired back, the eerie echo much more obvious in his voice from the way the others were looking around. That’s all they needed was a repeat of their childhood training sessions, featuring Five vs Six. 

Klaus had had enough. He stormed into the kitchen and grabbed a wooden spoon and a frying pan. He banged them together loudly, pushing his way into the small gap between his brothers. He used the frypan to push Ben back a couple of steps, the spoon to prod Five. Both of them were still snarling at each other, so Klaus smacked the implements together a few more times to get his point across. He stopped when he saw poor Vanya covering her ears. 

Klaus dropped the items, holding his hands out in a gesture, looking between his two brothers. When neither of them started, he pointed at Ben, who rolled his eyes and folded his arms with a huff. 

“Fine. This arsehole went to meet up with that Handler woman. She offered him a briefcase to go back home, but only if he killed _all twelve_ members on the board of The Commission.”

The others in the room gasped, Allison holding a hand over her mouth.

“You weren’t going to do it, were you?” Allison asked in horror. 

“And how else are we going to get back home and stop the apocalypse?” Five snapped back, folding his arms tightly. He looked more like a sulky teenager than the old man he usually was. 

“Hang on, you mean that crazy lady with the . . .” Diego asked, waving a hand above his head. “The one with the weird hats and shit?”

“How do you know her?” Five asked, his eyes narrowing. 

Diego’s head dropped as he winced.

“She’s Lila’s mom. I met her at HQ. She was planning some sort of scheme to get control of the place.” Diego looked up at Five. “She’s like, batshit crazy. Tell me you weren’t actually going to trust something she came up with?”

Five scowled, pointing a finger at Diego, searching for the words to fire back before throwing his hands in the air and turning away with a strangled sound. 

“So what if I was? It’s our only option.”

Klaus waved his hands, getting the group’s attention. To his surprise everyone actually stopped and looked at him. 

He tapped his head, then motioned with his hands towards everyone in the room.

“We shoot her in the head?” Luther asked, puzzled. 

Klaus groaned, letting his shoulders drop dramatically.

“I think he means we should all put our heads together,” Vanya said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Klaus made the motion of clapping towards her, stifled by his brace. Luther’s mouth formed into an ‘o’.

“Oh yeah, that makes more sense.”

“He’s right you know,” Allison said, moving to stand next to Ray. “There are eight of us here. We should be able to come up with _something_.”

Five mumbled something under his breath, storming off to rattle around the kitchen. Allison shrugged to Klaus.

“He’ll calm down.”

So the seven of them all sat down on the chairs and couches, Klaus settling next to Ben. He threaded his arm through his brother’s tense one, leaning close to Ben’s ear. He supposed he still had seven minutes of talking left for the day, although the visit from the Swedes would set him back a bit. 

“Are you okay?” he whispered hoarsely into Ben’s ear. His brother turned to him, his jaw still tightly clenched.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” 

Klaus rolled his eyes. Five had said some pretty nasty things to Ben. He tipped his head so that it rested on Ben’s shoulder. They had never really tried to cuddle like this - Ben being completely incorporeal for years being the main reason. Ever since Klaus got sober and Ben got more and more solid, it just wasn’t something that they did. While Klaus had always been a tactile person even as a kid, Ben preferred his space.

Still, Klaus felt his body relax a little under his cold leather jacket. He knew Ben hated using his powers, that it made him feel like a monster, but today he’d used his powers to save two of his siblings. Klaus would have been meeting the girl upstairs again if Ben hadn’t been there.

“Thank you,” he whispered in Ben’s ear. He saw his jaw move from it’s tight clench into something more of a smile.

Then Klaus’ throat caught, launching him into a coughing attack in Ben’s ear.

“Urg,” Ben groaned, trying to pull away. Klaus grinned, clinging onto him even tighter.

“Okay,” Luther said loudly, signalling that they were about to begin. Klaus stopped playing around immediately. He wanted to be taken seriously, turn over a new leaf and all that crap they talked about in therapy.

“So we need to get back to our timeline, and we need to stop the apocalypse that is going to happen in two days.”

“I might have some more information on that,” Diego said, leaning forward in his seat. 

Klaus was loving the new brighter look on his brother. That orange shirt was doing wonders for his complexion.

Focus. 

Diego recounted what he saw on the monitors at The Commission. The motorcade with JFK driving down the road. The explosion at the FBI building with Vanya floating out of the wreckage. The motorcade turning the other way, Harvey Lee Oswald not getting his chance to assassinate the president. 

Then he talked about the aftermath. JFK blaming the Russians. The nuclear war that started and decidedly ended the world. 

By the end of it Vanya was white as that suit she rocked in the last apocalypse. Ray hadn’t quite dissolved back into the stunned state he spent the afternoon in, but he looked close. 

“So, we just have to stop the FBI getting their hands on Vanya?” Luther said, shifting almost protectively to shield her. “Then she won’t blow up the FBI building, the motorcade will go ahead as normal -”

“And what, let JFK die?” Diego snapped, scandalised. 

“It’s what happened the first time,” Ben said calmly. “Maybe it was meant to happen?” 

Diego threw himself back in the arm chair, mumbling angrily under his breath. 

“The Commission won’t let it be that easy,” Five said, standing outside the circle with a large mug of coffee. Klaus noticed Ben look down at his hands, anywhere but at Five. “They want the apocalypse to happen. The Commission want Kennedy to live.”

“So we should kill him?” Diego cried, clearly distressed by the idea. “Na-uh, we are not killing the president.”

“But if we stop the explosion or whatever that causes him to declare war, then we might not even need to worry about that,” Ben added. 

“How do we do that if Vanya is the explosion?” Luther asked carefully, glancing over at Vanya. 

“We don’t let her out of our sight. We stick together. If we lay low then the FBI won’t get a chance to find Vanya. No-one knows we’re here.”

“We still need a way home.”

Klaus tapped Ben on the arm, making a box shape with his hands and pretending to carry it. Ben nodded as he worked out the charade.

“What if we find a briefcase?”

Five rolled his eyes. 

“No, seriously,” Allison said, letting the reprimand seep through her words. “He’s got a point. Diego - do you think Herb would be able to get us one?”

Five shook his head. “Not while the Handler’s there, he won’t be able to sneak one out under her nose. She’ll have them locked up tighter than her -” Five stopped himself, clearing his throat. “She’ll have them well secured.”

“We could lay out a trap, maybe lure one of those guys here?” Luther suggested. 

Five paced for a moment, deep in thought. “That might work. Or . . . there is another option. I know of someone else who is currently in this timeline who has a briefcase. You could say I know them very well.”

“Enough with the secrets Five,” Diego snapped. “Spit it out.”

Five took a seat on the high stool next to Ray. “I’m here. This is where I was before I jumped back to 2019.”

“You mean you. _You_ you?”

“Yeah, me, around two weeks younger, but in my older body.”

“Hang on,” Ray interrupted, holding out a hand. “Isn’t that against the laws of time and space to exist in the same timeline as your past self.”

Five raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed. 

“You’re into quantum physics?”

“English and literature. I’ve read a lot of science fiction.” 

Five examined Ray’s serious expression, then shrugged. “Reasonable. Science fiction isn’t as made up as some think.”

Five stood back up and returned to his pacing, but stayed near the circle. Klaus thought that he looked like a kid in the playground trying to work out how to make friends.

“So, just to get this straight - we have two problems. One is the new apocalypse which the Commission _want_ to happen. The second is how we get back home.”

“What about what I saw at The Commission? With . . .” Diego tilted his head towards their tiny sister. Allison groaned at his lack of subtlety. 

“That’s not set in stone,” Five said, suddenly stopping his pacing. “It isn’t a fixed event in the timeline. What you saw was the most likely future given events up until now, but it doesn’t have to be the future.”

“So what you’re saying is to change what you would have done, and therefore change the timeline?” Ray said. 

Five nodded. 

“So the question is,” Ray said, leaning forwards. “What would you have normally done in this situation?”

Everyone went silent, refusing to look Ray in the eye. Even Allison started examining her nails. Klaus fought hard to keep the smirk off his face. 

“What’s so funny Klaus?” Vanya asked, tilting her head to the side.

All eyes were suddenly on him. Oh well, may as well try and share his thoughts. 

He pointed to Ray, making a swirling motion with his hand, pointing to his mouth. Somehow, Ray understood. 

“So I said what would you have normally done in this situation.” 

Klaus nodded, then grinned. He pointed to Luther, then motioned for Ben to get up and help him act it out. He tried to hold Ben in a headlock, but Ben was a lot taller than Vanya and it looked more like they were wrestling. 

“Ha!” Diego burst out, slapping his knee. “That’s exactly what you did.”

Klaus pointed to Diego next. He motioned to Ray’s belt, holding his hand out. Ray unthreaded it and gave it to Klaus, confused. 

“Oh I see where this is going,” Ben chuckled, settling back down on the couch. 

Klaus fastened the belt around him like a sash, then proceeded to run around the lounge area, kicking and blocking like they had been taught in training at the Academy. 

Everyone burst out laughing, Vanya and Luther the loudest. Diego slumped in his chair, sulking and muttering _I do not look like that_.

Klaus handed Ray back his belt then pointed to Vanya. He threw his hands out to motion a big explosion. 

“Fair, I did apparently blow up the moon,” she said, resigned. 

Then Klaus pointed to Allison, rushing around his new stage area in the middle of the circle in a panic, cupping his hand around his mouth and leaning into Diego, then Ben, earning more laughter. 

“Alright, alright, I know I need to _think_ about my rumours from now on,” Allison said, looking over at Ben. He smiled back. 

But Klaus wasn’t done. He pointed to Ben, then lifted up his top, walking around with his stomach pushed out and his hands waving like tentacles. 

He was met with roars of laughter. Even Five was back on his stool, chuckling away. 

Speaking of Five . . .

Klaus rushed over to the wall next to the kitchen, frantically pretending to write all over it. Luther’s laughter bellowed through the room. 

Klaus held his finger out in a ‘wait’ gesture, then rushed down the stairs to the main shop floor. He returned up the other stairs, holding a mannequin he’d noticed on the way in. 

Allison lost it, falling over Ray’s lap. 

“I don’t get it?” Vanya said, joining in the merry laughter but looking very confused. 

The mannequin wasn’t as attractive as Delores had been, and this one had legs which made her much more ungainly, but Klaus could work with that. He cupped her head, looking lovingly into her eyes, then winked at his siblings, sliding open the doors to the bedroom with a sultry glance over his shoulder. 

Klaus dumped the mannequin on the bed, then jumped out of the room, throwing his hands out.

Diego was rolling on the rug by that point while Luther was wiping tears from his eyes. 

“What about you eh?” Ben asked, as the only one who didn’t need to get his breath back.

Klaus dramatically swept a bottle of vodka he’d spotted on the kitchen bench and mimicked throwing back a bunch of pills, pretending to swig from the bottle then collapsed onto the couch, draping himself over Ben and Ray. 

Vanya leapt out of her seat and applauded excitedly. 

“So I guess you lot are usually all action no brains?” Ray chuckled, resettling Klaus’ legs in a less awkward position over his lap. 

“I knew I didn’t just marry you for your looks,” Allison said, kissing Ray on the cheek. Klaus couldn’t help but glance over to Luther who had suddenly stopped laughing. 

“Well, I’m starving,” Diego declared, sitting up on the floor. “What’s there to eat around here?”

“There’s a decent Chinese around the corner I think,” Ray said. 

“Great, Ray and I will go get it,” Diego said, jumping to his feet. “Vanya, you wanna come?”

She nodded, smiling shyly. 

The siblings all started milling around, Luther searching the fridge for drinks while Allison retreated for the bathroom, leaving Five, Ben and Klaus alone. 

“So,” Ben said, suddenly more serious. Klaus looked up from where he was cradled in his ghost-bro’s lap to see Ben’s stare fixed on Five. “What are you going to do?”

Klaus watched Five who was rubbing his jaw absently, as if looking for facial hair that hadn’t yet arrived. It must have been weird being an old man two weeks ago, only now to be stuck back in your teenage body. 

“Maybe we do need to try something different this time,” he responded. He looked up at Ben with clear blue eyes. It was the first time since he’d arrived back in 2019 that Klaus had seen him without a scowl. 

“Does that mean you’re not going to go off on your own this time? That we’re going to stick together?”

Five sighed, sitting forward over his knees. “I guess it does.”

They both sat there, brooding into the distance. 

Klaus snapped his fingers to get their attention. 

“Say sorry?” he gasped out. These two were unbelievable. 

Five closed his eyes with a sigh. Klaus could feel the vibrations of Ben’s groan through where he made contact with Ben’s cold body. 

“I guess . . . I’m sorry I said those things before,” Ben said, looking down at the coffee table. 

“Yeah, I’m sorry I said that stuff about you being dead.”

“I am dead dude,” Ben scoffed. Five rolled his eyes. 

“You know what I mean. What I said - it was uncalled for.”

“Yeah, me too.” 

Five shook his head. 

“Not all of it.” He didn’t elaborate, instead sliding off his stool and holding his hand out to Ben. 

Klaus didn’t give him time to take it before dragging Five down on top of him into a group-hug-stacks-on-Ben. He noticed that Five tolerated it for a second longer than he needed to before flashing back to a standing position and brushing down his blazer. 

Not long after, they were all gathered around the lounge area eating some pretty mediocre Chinese. Klaus didn’t care what it tasted like, he was starving. Diego had cleverly given Luther his own separate bag of food so everyone else had a chance to grab something. 

Their plan to stop the apocalypse relied on keeping Vanya safe and away from the FBI for at least the next twenty hours, they hadn't decided what to do about JFK and they had no way to get home, but somehow, everything seemed alright. 

As long as they stuck together.

Just as Klaus reached for the bag of rice crackers, there was a blue flash. He jumped, spilling the bag all over the rest of the food. 

“Herb?” Diego asked, a half eaten spring roll in his hand. 

Standing in the kitchen was Herb, nervously holding a briefcase. Klaus saw the way Five eyed the case. Herb clutched it more closely to his body.

“Hey D,” Herb said with a wave, moving into the lounge area. He exchanged a fancy handshake with Diego that made Allison’s eyebrows disappear into her hairline. 

“What’s going on?” Diego asked casually, an arm thrown around his buddy’s shoulders, still holding his spring roll.

“I haven’t got long,” Herb said, eyeing the group. When his eyes settled on Five, Klaus noticed the way Herb shrunk further into Diego. 

“Something has changed in the timeline. The vision I showed you - it isn’t going to happen anymore.” 

“Yes!” Luther said, punching his fist in the air. “The apocalypse is off?”

“Well,” Herb said, shifting from foot to foot. “When Five turned down the Handler’s plan to assassinate the board and take over The Commission, she took matters into her own hands.”

Everyone looked over at Five. 

“What? I decided not to run off on my own on a murderous rampage for once. Get over it.”

“I’m proud of you,” Allison said kindly, placing a hand on Five’s shoulder. He tried unsuccessfully to hide any emotion from his face. 

“The problem is,” Herb continued, “ . . she’s determined to let the president live and get him to declare war and end the world. She’s got Lila and a few of the heavier handed assassins on her side, including some she’s gone back in the timeline for.”

“Oh no,” Ben hissed under his breath, looking at Klaus. Klaus held out his hands, not sure what his brother was suddenly upset about. 

“Oh yes,” Herb answered. “That’s why I’m here. You need to stop her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No points for guessing who's coming back on the Handler's side. 
> 
> Five has the emotional range of an eraser. 
> 
> We heart Ray.
> 
> NEXT chapter is the showdown.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some old friends are back. 
> 
> Team Zero save the day . . . ?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'll just write a one shot"
> 
> Eleven chapters later . . . 
> 
> Thanks so much for all the kudos and comments. I really love hearing your reactions

Klaus helped clear the food from the coffee table as Herb opened a file, laying the contents out on the coffee table. 

One of them looked like a map with a route drawn on it. There were other documents, written on a typewriter and a few black and white surveillance style photos. 

“So the Handler still wants the explosion to happen and scare the president into war, the only difference being that she wants to hit the motorcade earlier, here,” Herb said, pointing to a road not far out of the airport. There didn’t seem to be any buildings or structures along the road.

“Farm land?” Five asked. Herb nodded.

“She hasn’t got the resources to set up something in the city with all the security that will be around for JFK’s visit. Her plan is for JFK to disembark at the airport, then to set off an explosion a minute after they leave the gates, not enough to do much damage but enough to scare the president into thinking the Russians were involved. She already has someone working on creating fake telegraph messages that she will leak the day after, causing JFK to declare war.”

“So all we have to do is stop her before she sets off the explosion?” Luther asked, holding a photograph of a tank rolling down the main street of Dallas. 

“And we can still save JFK?” Diego added hopefully. Herb shrugged. 

“Maybe . . .” He didn’t sound too positive.

“And what’s in it for you?” Five asked, eyes narrowing on Herb. 

The small man backed up, hands held out. “Nothing, I mean, none of us want her in power.”

“But didn’t you say there was a Board of Directors?” Luther asked, then pointed to Five. “And if he didn’t kill them, aren’t they still in control?” 

Herb rubbed his hands together, folding them over and over repeatedly. He looked to the side, unable to make eye contact with any of them.

“When Five didn’t meet her to go through with the plan, she knew he’d changed his mind. So she went to the back up plan.”

Five groaned, collapsing into the armchair with his hands over his face. 

“Five! What’s wrong?” Vanya asked, crouching at his knee. 

“I was going to do it,” he muttered, still with his face in his hands. “I was going to do it, the only thing that stopped me was you guys.” 

Ben broke the silence with a sigh.

“So she asked you again when you didn’t have any of us around,” Ben said solemnly. Klaus didn’t get it. What had Ben and Five figured out?

“Wait, no, you’ve been here the whole time,” Allison said in alarm. “When did you get time to flash out of here and kill twelve people?”

Klaus was equally confused. Five could be a slippery little thing, but he literally had not been out of his sight the whole night.

“ _I_ didn’t. But me two weeks ago did.” Five looked distraught.

Klaus looked at Ben for an explanation. 

“Before, Five said that this is where he was right before he jumped back to 2019. Dallas, in 1963. He was alone.”

“I would have done anything to get back home,” Five sighed, rubbing his hands through his hair. Vanya patted his knee, perching on the arm of the chair. 

“It’s not your fault,” Ben said. “It wasn’t you, well, it was but, you know what I mean.”

Five let his hands drop, leaning forwards on his knees. He looked up to Ben with his mouth clenched tight into what was almost a smile. Maybe. Or a grimace. It was hard to tell with Five.

“So now, the Board are all dead, The Handler is trying to seize power and make sure the apocalypse happens and she has old Five working for her - and Lila,” Luther summed up.

Klaus noticed the way Diego winced at her name. 

“She may have also found someone else further back in the timeline to help out . . .” Herb added, glancing over at Klaus quickly then continuing. 

“She’s also got Cha Cha.”

Klaus felt the blood drain from his face. Visions of being stuck in that cupboard, coming down and beaten to a pulp flashed through his mind. He felt Ben’s arm wrap around his back, cold but secure. 

Diego jumped out of his seat. Klaus felt a rush of gratitude at the anger on his brother’s face. 

“The bitch that killed Patch?”

Oh that’s right. They didn’t know. Well, they vaguely knew, but with everything that had been going on that week there hadn’t really been time to go into the fact that the two assassins had tortured him for hours while he was withdrawing and struggling with his powers being sober for the first time in years. 

“So what’s the plan?” Allison asked. She was holding Ray’s hand tightly in her own lap. 

“Apocalypse first. Stop The Handler,” Five said, as if rattling off a shopping list. “Then we worry about getting home.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Herb said. “She’s locked down the Briefcase Room, but if you can stop her from taking control of The Commission, then I should be able to get you a briefcase to get home.”

Five tapped his chin, then nodded. 

“So that’s the plan. Tomorrow morning we stop The Handler and her team here,” Five said, pointing to the desolate road on the map. “Stop the explosion, JFK rolls through none the wiser.”

“Then we stop Oswald right?” Diego added eagerly.

No-one answered. 

“What are we going to do with The Handler?” Ben asked. 

Five sighed. “I’ll try to reason with her.” 

Klaus exchanged a look with Ben. He didn’t sound very hopeful.

“And if that doesn’t work?” Allison asked. 

“Then I’ll take care of it,” Five said with a sigh, looking every bit the tired old man. 

“We need to get some rest then,” Vanya said, looking at the clock on the wall. 

“Why don’t you all come back to ours?” Ray suggested, looking around the lounge space. “Our house isn’t huge, but there should be enough room for us all to stay together.”

They packed up the last of the take away food, bade goodbye to Herb who flashed back to The Commission and headed off to the Chestnut House. 

To Klaus’ surprise, the house was spotless. The furniture looked exactly as it had before the fight, although the record player that had been destroyed now had a CD player on it too. They couldn’t always get the timeline right he supposed. 

Ray discovered that the couch that had just been an ordinary sofa now had a pull out, so he set that up for Luther and Five. Vanya took the couch cushions and the cushion from the arm chair and made herself a bed on the floor. Allison found a single blow up camping mattress and squashed it in next to Klaus’ mattress on the other side of the sofa. 

“I’ll grab the mattress off our bed,” Allison said after finding sheets for all the beds. Klaus got up off Luther who's back he jumped on while he was trying to straighten the sheets and rushed up to his sister in the corridor. 

Allison turned around.

“What’s up?” she asked. 

Klaus shook his head, pointing to upstairs. 

“You can help me if you want, but it might be a bit hard with one hand.”

Klaus shook his head again. Urg, where had he left that Ouija board?

Ben popped into vision beside him. “He’s saying that you should spend the night with Ray.”

Allison smiled. “No, we stick together,” she said with a chuckle. 

Klaus pushed her towards the stairs, pointing. 

“Spend the night with your husband,” Ben said. “You don’t know how much more time we’ll have here.”

Allison's face dropped. She looked away, nodding once. She’d thought about that too then. 

If everything went to plan tomorrow, they were going home. Klaus had no idea if Ray would come with them or not, and that’s only if everything went to plan. Something could happen tomorrow . . . 

And what about Dave? What was he going to do? He had to stop him signing up and dying on that hill . . .

Klaus pushed the thoughts out of his head. 

Everything would be alright. 

He gave his sister a hug. She squeezed him back tightly, dragging Ben into the huddle. 

“Thanks guys.”

Klaus watched Allison go up the stairs, then bounded into the living room, jumping on an unsuspecting Diego who had the gall to steal his mattress. 

“Urg! How the fuck did you get so heavy?” Diego whined, throwing Klaus onto the blow-up next to him. Klaus grabbed a cushion and threw it back at him, but his ever-vigilant brother ducked it, letting it hit Five in the face. 

“You’ll pay for that,” Five threatened, pointing a finger at Klaus. He stuck his tongue out in retaliation. 

“C’mon guys,” Vanya chuckled. “Let’s get some sleep.”

Luther got up to turn the lights out, leaving one lamp on in the corner of the room nearest Klaus. 

Everything would be alright. 

The next morning they were all bundled up in Vanya’s car, heading towards the isolated road just outside of the airport. Klaus had noticed his sister’s face was splotchy, she’d been talking on the phone to someone early that morning, someone who sounded very special. 

Klaus had his own cry that morning when they said goodbye to Ray. He’d been fine until Ray told Allison that he was the luckiest man in Dallas, no matter what happened. 

They left promising to see him that night. 

Klaus hoped they weren’t lying.

His stomach was doing somersaults. He was no good in these situations. If it turned into a fight, he was useless. Maybe they’d just make him lookout as normal. His leg bounced in agitation. 

“Pull over here,” Five said, pointing to a skinny lane only just wide enough for a car jutting off the main road. They were between two corn fields that would give more than enough cover for the car. 

They bundled out of the car, Luther climbing out of the boot because he was too big to fit anywhere else. Five was loaded up with a rifle that he’d taken from Elliot’s flat. Diego had managed to get a knife belt from somewhere, strapped on over his black shirt.

The weather was cooler than it had been, the sky getting darker as if threatening to rain. Klaus had a long black coat on, but he still felt a chill. 

Diego led them through the cover of the corn fields, Five holding the map and a compass to make sure they were heading in the right direction. 

As they got closer, they heard something rustling unnaturally up ahead. 

“Hang on, I’ll go,” Ben said, suddenly visible. He disappeared again as the others crouched in the cover of the corn. 

He returned a moment later, speaking in hushed tones. They huddled around in a circle, all seven of them.

“She’s there,” he said, pointing up ahead. “Maybe seventy yards up ahead. Lila and Cha Cha are with her and an old man and four others, three guys and a girl dressed in suits who I don’t know.”

“The old man must be me,” Five said quietly. 

“There’s a pick up van, I think that’s where the bomb or whatever must be. It’s out on the side of the road.”

“So how about Luther - you go for the Handler. Vanya, you take out Lila and I’ll go for Cha Cha,” Diego suggested. 

Klaus wasn’t surprised that he still hadn’t settled the score with Cha Cha. He wasn’t too upset, as long as he didn’t have to go anywhere near her. 

“Five, you take out, well, Five. Ben and Allison, you guys should be able to handle the hired muscle.”

“What about Klaus?” Ben asked. 

Diego licked his lips. Klaus knew what he was about to say.

“Lookout.”

“That isn’t going to work,” Five said quietly. 

“Why not?” Diego asked. “What, because it’s not your plan?”

“No, because of Paradox Psychosis.”

Five explained the seven stages in a hushed voice.

“Homicidal rage?” Luther hissed. “And you’re just telling us this now?”

“Jesus Five!” Diego muttered. 

“Besides, I need to be in that van. There could be a timer or some other trigger mechanism. I’ll go for the bomb.”

“And if it goes off?” Allison asked. 

“I’ll jump out of there.”

She nodded. Out of all of them, he was the only one with a chance of understanding the wiring of the bomb and the only one that could escape if it went wrong. 

“So we’ll just have to wing it with old man Five then,” Vanya said. 

“Just -” Five said, licking his lips. “Just make sure he knows who you are. He won’t attack you if he knows who you are.”

“How do you know?” Luther asked.

“Because he’s me. I’m him!”

Five checked his watch. 

“It’s time. The motorcade will be leaving the airport soon.”

Diego put his hand in the middle of the circle. 

“Team Zero on three!” he whispered. 

Everyone glared at him. No-one made a move to put their hand in the circle. 

The group broke up, crawling through the tall corn stalks. Klaus heard Diego grumbling up ahead of him. 

Klaus followed Ben through the corn stalks as his siblings fanned out. 

The sound of gunfire rang out on Klaus’ right. He hit the ground as he’d been trained to do in Vietnam, fumbling for a rifle he didn’t have. 

“Klaus, keep moving!” Ben shouted. He must have made himself invisible again, able to yell at Klaus as loudly as he wanted. Klaus crawled along the dirt, following Ben who was guiding him through the corn rows. 

“Shit, Klaus, go back, go back!” Ben shouted. Klaus crawled backwards, heart pounding against his chest. More gunfire rang out . . . where were the rest of his troop? Where was Dave?

The shots were closer. Klaus clamped his hands over his ears. The sarge better get them moved out of this field soon.

“Klaus! Concentrate!” Ben shouted. Klaus shook his head, trying to clear the sound of shelling from his ears.

“There’s a guy coming, you’ve gotta run!” Ben urged.

Klaus scrambled to his feet, running through the corn with Ben close behind, checking on the guy tailing them. 

He didn’t see the woman until he’d slammed straight into her. They bounced off each other, both landing hard on their backs. 

She wasn’t wearing the usual rebel uniform, but there was something about her suit that screamed ‘enemy’. 

She sat up and pointed her pistol at Klaus but he flattened himself out against the ground just as she fired her shot. He felt the heat of the bullet over the top of his head. He reached forward and lunged out, grabbing her ankle and tugging hard. 

The woman lost her balance, arms swinging above her head as a suddenly blue Ben pinned her down, straddling her chest. He slammed her arm down, dislodging the gun on the second hit. 

He threw the gun to Klaus who caught it and spun around, pulling the trigger.

He’d heard the soldier coming a mile off, his puffing and panting loud in Klaus’ sensitised ears. He fired off three rounds into his chest before the man was even able to raise his own gun.

The man fell back with a thud, the blood blooming across his white shirt. 

He shot him exactly where Dave had been hit. 

He heard a wet slurp as a tentacle retracted back into Ben’s chest. The woman’s head was flopped sideways at a strange angle. 

Another gunshot rang out somewhere in the distance. 

Klaus ducked down, crouching between the tall stalks, arms over his head in case they decided to drop bombs (not that it would matter, but he’d lost his helmet somewhere). He took the gun from the dead soldier with the chest wound (notDavenotDave) and stuffed it in his coat pocket, remembering the story Wilson had told them all about his cousin who had once stuffed a gun down the waistband of his pants.

There were two quick gun shots, then the rumble of an engine. 

Klaus ran the other way. 

Ben appeared in front of him, blocking his path. Klaus stumbled to a stop, hands shaking.

“Klaus, you have to go back! Five’s disabled the bomb, he’s driving the truck, the others have captured them. It’s over.”

Klaus’ eyes darted around, his chest pumping in and out, breathing hard and so loudly he was surprised the Charlies didn’t hear him. 

“Klaus,” Ben said, softly.

What was Ben doing here?

The sound of voices back the other way had him diving back into the dirt. How did he get split from his platoon? Is that who he could hear shouting?

Ben crouched next to him, his big brown eyes pleading. 

“You aren’t there Klaus. You’re here, with your family. In Dallas.”

Dallas. He was in Dallas? 

“Klaus, you need to go back.”

The dirt, it smelled _wrong_. Too metallic. 

He wasn’t in Vietnam. He was with Ben. 

Klaus nodded, letting his brother drag him back to his feet. 

Klaus burst through the last row of corn to see a wide path carved through by The Handler’s van. It looked like Five had driven it straight through the field, creating a cleared space. Old man Five was standing over an unconscious nameless assassin, scratching at his neck like crazy. Both Luther and Diego were holding down a struggling Lila who was giving Klaus’ brothers a hard time for someone so small. Allison had the Handler pinned face down in the dirt, her knee on the woman’s neck, Vanya watching on from near where Klaus was standing with a hazy glow in her eyes. 

Another one of the suits was lying a few metres along the road carved by the van, mud tracked over their body in the shape of tyre marks. They didn’t look like they’d be getting up. 

Five jumped out of the driver’s seat of the van, keeping his distance from his older self. His hair was plastered to his head with sweat. 

In the distance sounded the sirens of the motorcade. Klaus grinned at Ben. 

They’d done it. They’d actually done it. 

“Game’s up,” Diego shouted gleefully. “Kennedy’s just driven past. You haven’t got a bomb. It’s too late.”

The Handler smacked a fist into the dirt, splattering more mud over her face. 

Wait a minute. 

The Handler.

Lila.

Old man Five (who was now on their side).

Two field agents that Klaus and Ben had killed.

One field agent dead - run over.

One field agent knocked out by Five.

Where was -

“Cha Cha!” Ben shouted, pointing behind Klaus. Behind Vanya. 

Vanya was too close. 

Cha Cha had a gun and a sneer that could kill.

No - Cha Cha had a _flame thrower_.

She aimed it at Vanya. 

“No!” 

Luther burst towards her with speed Klaus didn’t think he still possessed. He grabbed Vanya in a tight hug and turned, showing his back to the jet of flames that shot out of Cha Cha’s weapon. 

Klaus gasped as the fire bounced off Luther’s skin, burning his shirt but leaving nothing but singed hair on is back. 

Cha Cha lifted the flame thrower again, poised at her hip. 

Klaus ran at her. 

He sprinted as hard as he could, slamming his shoulder into her before she even had the chance to see him coming. They both tumbled into the dirt, the flame thrower spilling from Cha Cha’s grip. 

He rolled onto his front, clawing at the dirt to reach the strap of the weapon when the ground shook. He held on tightly, digging his fingers into the dirt as the vibrations got stronger, threatening to throw him from the earth. 

Klaus looked up.

“Oh _shit_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What happened?
> 
> Don't think that was the whole action scene guys - that was just the start!
> 
> We love Cha Cha too much for such a small cameo. 
> 
> There are like 2 chapters left. I think. Maybe.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Showdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Proofread/post? Proofread/post? Post. 
> 
> Someone else is back too!
> 
> Thanks for your awesome support - helps me smash these chapters out.

Vanya had never seen her siblings in action.

Correction - Vanya couldn't _remember_ ever seeing her siblings in action. 

She was a little awestruck watching Diego fling knives at the Commission guy in the suit, one striking him right in the jugular, collapsing face down in the corn rows. She was amazed at Allison’s fighting skills dodging The Handler’s bullets, distracting her while Luther took her down from behind without her seeing him. Five had flashed away only to return moments later driving the van through the corn field over Diego’s victim, declaring the bomb disarmed. 

Old man Five had tried to fight them at first until he saw them in action. Diego’s knives, Luther’s strength, Allison’s well-honed skills. 

Once he realised that they were his family, he quickly swapped sides, taking down an assassin with ease. He looked a bit ill upon seeing younger (or older?) Five jump out of the van, which Vanya thought was fair enough. 

Luther and Diego were struggling with Lila. It seemed to Vanya like she might have powers too, but she couldn’t pin down what they were. At one point she was as strong as Luther, then she was able to throw one of Diego’s knives back at him with amazing precision. Finally, Luther and Diego managed to hold her down, but they were struggling. 

Klaus came bursting through the corn, covered dirt and blood, holding a pistol. He looked a bit shell-shocked, which was understandable with the blood splattered on his face. 

Then there was yelling and Luther was rushing towards Vanya grabbing onto her and holding her tightly, turning her away from a bright burning heat. 

He held onto her, his tight arms around her neck, so tight she almost couldn’t breathe.

Like he was squeezing the air from her.

_A heavy door crashing to the ground_

All she wanted was a hug. 

_Let me out, let me out. . ._

And he tricked her. 

_Her power choking the life force from her brothers, held aloft in the theatre._

He locked her up. 

_They’d lied to her, they’d all lied to her_.

He was holding her too tightly. 

The wail of the sirens fading into the distance. 

Vanya felt her power surge through her in a rush all at once, like waves fighting to crash over each other. 

It burst from her, powered by the sound of someone screaming. 

She remembered _everything_.

*********************

Klaus clawed his fingers into the shaking ground.

Then his smallest sister started to scream. 

A burst of bright white light flooded the clearing like a flash. Klaus remembered that light. It was the same light as that night at the theatre. 

Vanya’s powers. 

Like a sound wave, the force of her power followed a moment after, rippling from where his sister stood like a tidal wave. Luther was thrown high into the air. 

The wave hit Klaus. He felt himself picked up like a leaf and thrown back, unable to control his descent. He landed on his back, sinking into a thicket of corn that partly broke his fall. 

He rolled over, struggling to get to his feet. He used the tall stalks of corn to find which way was upright, unable to tell for himself. He touched his ears which felt wet, his fingers coming away with blood.

He staggered forward, bending the stalks of corn out of his way as he tried to make his way back to the clearing. He could hear the muffled sound of raised voices from further ahead through the thick wetness in his ears. 

Finally he could see light through the rows of corn and pushed the last one away. He wasn’t standing in the same clearing as before. This one was much larger, shaped in a perfect circle. There was a van in the middle, flipped on its side and a tractor closer to his side of the circle that must have been already in the field, skid marks showing where it had been spun from its original position. 

There were bodies scattered around the edges of the circle. 

Klaus felt his stomach drop as he realised there were more people down than had been in the clearing moments ago. He squinted, unable to make out more than blurred shapes. 

He found Luther first, on his side at the very edge of the circle, his singed back facing Klaus. He rushed over to his brother, stumbling over the downed stalks of corn with unsteady feet. 

“Luther,” he whispered as he got closer, hacking out a cough. He reached his brother and shook his shoulder, edging around to see his face. 

His eyes were closed, blood leaking into them from a cut on his cheek. 

“Luther,” Klaus repeated, managing to get a bit louder. His hands trembled as he tried to find a pulse at his leathery neck, although he couldn’t tell if it was his brother’s or his own heart pounding in his chest. Klaus lay his cheek against Luther’s chest, hoping to feel it rise and fall. 

He felt a vibration through Luther’s body that became a groan. Klaus sagged in relief, letting out a cry before dragging himself to sit back on his knees as Luther came around. Klaus used his sleeve to wipe the blood out of Luther’s eyes as the big man struggled to open them. 

“That’s it big boy,” Klaus rasped. He started coughing uncontrollably, barely getting his braced arm up to his mouth. 

“Urg, can’t you turn away,” Luther hissed. Klaus grinned through his coughing fit as his brother grunted his way into a sitting position. 

“The others?” Luther asked, rubbing his head. Klaus looked around, noticing that his vision was a little out of focus. 

There was something small and blue in the dead centre of the field, like a small rock. 

Vanya. 

Klaus abandoned Luther, sprinting with disobedient limbs to his sister curled up in a tight ball. 

He skidded to his knees in front of her, stopping himself from touching her just in case he was sent back into the corn fields again. Her head was tucked tightly into her arms.

She was saying something. Klaus tried to hold his own loud breaths to hear her.

_I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry._

His sister sobbed the words over and over. 

“Vanya,” Klaus strained, pushing his throat to obey him. “Vanya, it’s me, Klaus.” He coughed with the harsh K sound. “It’s okay, it’s all okay.”

The familiarity of Vanya’s distraught state told him all he needed to know. She’d gotten her memory back. 

Klaus tried to speak again, but his throat felt like it had swollen closed. 

He looked around the clearing to see the bodies at the other edge near the truck start to rise. 

He hoped they were his family, but he knew some of those people weren’t friendly. 

He didn’t have time to waste. 

Klaus embraced his sister, holding her tightly held body in his arms. Her breath hitched for a moment when he felt the swell of her power like a pressure in his head before it vanished completely as she collapsed into his chest, sobbing loudly. 

“I’m sorry,” he heard, muffled into his jacket. Klaus ran his good hand over her back, hoping that the touch alone would be enough to get the message he wished he could speak across.

_You aren’t alone. You are loved._

“Vanya!” Klaus heard Luther cry out from behind. His sister pulled away, her pale face streaked with tears. 

“Luther!” She cried, jumping to her feet. She hesitated until Luther held his arms out. Vanya ran to him, throwing herself into his waist. 

“You’re okay!” she wept, letting out a shuddering breath. “I’m so sorry-”

“No, it’s me who should be sorry,” Luther cut in sorrowfully. “I should never have hurt you.”

“You saved me -”

Their Five flashed next to Klaus causing Vanya to jump back into Luther. He dropped his shoulder protectively, but this time without touching her. Five’s blazer was abandoned, his hair a sweaty mess. Klaus was sure that he heard a fart as he arrived. 

“Vanya, what happened?” Five asked, scratching at his neck like a dog with fleas. 

Vanya turned away from Luther, hunching her shoulders in a way that Klaus hadn’t seen since they’d been reunited. 

“I remember everything. Luther . . . _holding_ me, it triggered the memories. I’m so sorry . . .”

Five waved her apologies away, shaking his head. “We’re okay, that’s what matters.”

Another blue flash and a _thwip_ and old man Five appeared, almost landing on top of young man Five. 

“Watch it!” Young Five spat, jumping away from his older (but actually younger) counterpart. 

“You watch it!” Other Five hissed back. It was funny to look at him, to think that this is how Five would look when he was older. It was weird to Klaus to even imagine Five with facial hair. 

“What are you still doing here anyway?” Young Five challenged with a pointed finger. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“What, trying to get rid of me? What are you trying to hide?” Old Five growled back, trying to stand over Young Five but evidently Five didn’t have much growing to do after his early teenage years. 

Young Five glared at Old Five as he slid his hand in his pocket, not trying to hide the click of the pistol he had hidden in there. Neither of them broke eye contact.

“Oh no,” Luther muttered. “They’re Stage Five-ing.”

Leaving Luther and Vanya to sort out the Fives, Klaus wandered across the open field towards the overturned van at the other side of the cleared-out circle. He could see Allison helping Diego to his feet on the near side of the vehicle.

Where was Ben? 

Klaus couldn’t remember if he’d been solid or not when Vanya’s sound wave hit, or even whether that made a difference. He looked around, holding his hands out to keep himself steady. 

What if something happened to Ben? He would surely come straight to Klaus, to look him over and tell him he was an idiot. Where was he?

Klaus balled his hand into a fist, willing the blue light to shine. He’d barely had to use his powers like this lately, Ben being able to just siphon what he needed as he needed it. He felt other presences lurking behind the veil, but none of them were familiar. None of them were Ben. 

He bit back a sob. No need to panic. Ben would be back, he was just . . . 

Deep down, Klaus knew Ben would never leave him alone at a time like this. Not unless he didn’t have a choice. 

The wind suddenly picked up, the warp of sound waves thrumming in Klaus’ sore ears. He looked back over his shoulder at Vanya, but she looked just as surprised as he did. No white light, no glowing eyes. 

“Klaus! Get down!” Diego shouted. Klaus turned the other way to see he and Allison ducked behind the van. 

A bright light drew his attention in the other direction, almost halfway between the two groups of his siblings. 

Lila. Her eyes glowed with the same white luminescence of Vanya’s as she rose into the air, the sound waves getting stronger. Klaus staggered a step back, trying to stay standing. 

Next to her on the ground was The Handler, smugly watching Lila lift her hands in the air. Cha Cha bracketed the other side, watching Lila uneasily but with her gun at the ready.

Klaus realised he was in the middle of the field, completely unprotected. 

Lila brought her hands downwards, pushing them out sharply. Klaus closed his eyes. 

The light was bright and all consuming as he felt the rush of air crush his body. 

Then it stopped. 

Losing track of where gravity was trying to pull him, he tipped backwards but the hard impact he expected never came. The rush of wind thundered in his ears.

“Klaus!” Diego shouted, way too close. Klaus felt a sharp slap on his cheek.

He grunted, opening his eyes. Diego and Allison were looking down on him, their arms suspending him off the ground. Another face peered down at him. Old Five. 

He looked around, seeing the undercarriage of some kind of vehicle on one side, corn plants and dirt flying past on the other, the wind howling. He was behind the van with Allison and Diego when a second ago he’d been in an open field. 

It wasn’t the wind of Lila’s (or really Vanya’s) powers that had hit him. It was Old Five teleporting him out of the way.

“Thanks,” Klaus choked, although he doubted Old Five could hear him over the sheer volume of the wind. He wriggled his way out of Allison and Diego’s grip to sit on the ground. He was grateful for them not letting him knock himself out, but he needed to feel the earth beneath him. 

Allison kept her hand on Klaus’ shoulder, kneading her fingers into his skin. It felt reassuring in the disorienting turn of events. His ears still felt like they were full of water. 

He looked up at Allison, tapping her hand to get her attention over the roar of the wind. She leaned in close, listening. 

“Ben -” Klaus managed to choke out. Allison looked back at him, alarmed. 

“Where is he?” she shouted back. 

Klaus shook his head, aware that his eyes were pricking with tears. Allison stroked a hand down the side of his face. 

“He’ll be back, it’s alright,” she said loudly, but Klaus could still hear the uncertainty in her voice. 

Another blue flash and Young Five landed, ducking behind the truck with the rest of them. 

“Did you get them out of the way in time?” Old Five shouted. 

Young Five nodded. Klaus tried to sit up a bit with Allison’s help to see that Luther and Vanya were tucked behind the tractor, shielded from the power storm. Young Five must have jumped them while Old Five grabbed him. 

“You need to get out of here! There’s a grassy knoll that you have an appointment with,” he shouted at Old Five, who shook his head.

“No, you go!” he shouted back with the same crotchety intonation. 

“If you don’t go back, I don’t end up here! It would be catastrophic!”

Old Five thought about this for a moment. 

“I know what went wrong with the calculations!” Five yelled. “The decimal place was in the wrong spot!” 

This new information seemed to make up his mind.

“Fine!” Old Five said, resigned. He looked over to Diego, Klaus and Allison, taking one last look.

“See you soon,” he said, disappearing with a flash. 

“Wait!” Diego shouted, too late. “I need to go with him! Kennedy!”

Five shook his head. “You need to stay here with us.”

Diego punched his fist into the dirt. Klaus couldn’t understand why saving JFK had meant so much to him. They had always thought it was Luther who was the mission-junkie, but in a way, it seemed Diego was too. 

Klaus sat himself up, leaning on the car tyre for support. 

“How long can she go on like this?” Allison asked, peering around the side of the van. The wind blew her hair back in a stream. 

“She’s using Vanya’s powers, but our powers aren’t unlimited. She should tire soon.” Five slumped against the underside of the van next to Klaus, then perked up.

“Or we can speed things up.”

Five grabbed Diego’s arm who barely got a chance to say _oh no_ before Five whipped him out of sight. Allison and Klaus peered around the side of the car to see Five and Diego reappear behind Lila.

The wind suddenly stopped, relieving the overwhelming pressure in Klaus’ head. Instead it was replaced by yelling.

“You split up with me, and this is how you treat me?” a plummy British accent shouted.

“You broke it off when you tried to kill my family!” Diego shouted back. He was locked in combat with his girlfriend (ex-girlfriend) while Five battled Cha Cha, flashing in and out while The Handler watched on gleefully.

Diego threw a knife at Lila who flashed out of sight. 

“That’s Five’s power!” Allison exclaimed. “She’s stealing our powers.”

But she wasn’t using Vanya’s power any more, and she wasn’t super strong like she had been when Luther and Diego were holding her down. 

Klaus came to the realisation that she could only steal one of their powers at a time.

“C’mon, let’s go!” Allison said, tugging Klaus along to run towards the action. He looked over to see Luther and Vanya do the same.

They were about fifty yards from where Diego and Five were battling the two Commission agents. Against all six (seven, please let it be seven) of them, they wouldn’t stand a chance. 

“Lila!” The Handler called out, pointing to Klaus and his siblings sprinting towards them, closing in fast. 

Lila dodged one of Diego’s blows, turning to the rest of the family.

“I heard a rumour,” she said with a smirk, “That The Umbrella Academy couldn’t move!”

Klaus felt his limbs lock, freezing him to the spot. Luther had tumbled over with the momentum he’d built, laying face down in the grass. Allison stood like a statue ahead of Klaus, hands stretched out as if to block the rumour. Vanya was frozen mid-run. 

Even Diego and Five were stuck still.

Cha Cha laughed. “Ohh, I didn’t know about you girl, but you are alright,” she said, walking a full circle around Five who was frozen on landing a jump, his fists balled tight, knees bent. 

The Handler clapped her hands, looking over proudly to Lila. Lila beamed under the praise. 

“There’s a face I recognise,” Cha Cha mused, looking over to Klaus. He tried to flinch away but his body didn’t move an inch. She strode across the field, tucking her gun into her belt as she approached him. 

“I didn’t know the junkie could shut up,” Cha Cha said, standing directly in front of Klaus. She turned back to The Handler, pointing a finger at his chest. “This one is what I reckon sent Hazel over the edge. Over twenty four hours and he did not shut up for a moment.”

Klaus wanted to grin. If only she’d seen him over the last week or so. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he could see Allison move slightly. Just her fingers, but she definitely moved. 

She was fighting the rumour. 

Five had said something about Lila tiring out. She wouldn’t be able to hold them like this forever, they weren’t her powers. 

Cha Cha took out her pistol and smacked it across Klaus’ face. His head didn’t move at all, absorbing the impact that stung against his cheek.

“He was into some freaky kinky shit too,” Cha Cha said, looking at Klaus in disgust. 

“Cha Cha, stop playing with your food. Shoot them all so we can get out of here.” The Handler sounded tired of it all. Her once-elegant clothes were covered in dirt, her hair had come out of its coiffed style, hanging loosely over her shoulders. 

Time was running out. 

The thing was, Klaus didn’t need to move to use his powers. He could see how hard Lila was straining to maintain the rumor. He just needed a distraction, and he knew of at least four that were readily available. 

Cha Cha positioned the barrel of the pistol under Klaus’ chin, pressed into the skin hard enough to bruise, even though he couldn’t move. 

Klaus concentrated on the coldness that ran through his veins, calling through the veil between the worlds in his mind. 

The first blue light to appear morphed into a cowboy, which wasn’t entirely what Klaus was expecting, but he couldn’t be fussy at this stage. Cha Cha hadn’t seen him yet, but Klaus heard the sharp intake of breath from The Handler. 

The next ghost manifested real close to them, a farmer that looked to have had one side of his body crushed, his chest and arm deformed sickeningly. 

Cha Cha jumped back, firing a round at the ghost. 

Klaus felt the smallest release in the force holding him in place. He pushed against it, trying to move but he could only blink his eyelids. He saw Luther straining against it, actually managing to move his shoulder. 

Klaus closed his eyes and _pulled_.

He opened his eyes to screaming. 

The four Commission employees were back, closing in on The Handler who was madly shooting at them with an automatic shotgun. Lila was screaming, scrambling away from a little girl with her hair in plaits. 

Luther took a whole step forward. 

Allison bent her arm. 

It was working. 

A larger ghost appeared where the farmer had been.

“Hey partner.” 

“ _Hazel_ ,” Cha Cha said, eyes pinned wide. The pistol fell from her hand. 

As he stepped towards her she kicked out reflexively, catching him in the hip. Hazel didn’t flinch. Ghosts couldn’t feel pain after all. 

"You're looking good," Cha Cha taunted. "Blue suits you." 

Hazel threw a hook which Cha Cha deftly ducked, her straight hair swinging to the side as she aimed a jab at the meaty part of Hazel’s back. 

"Better than the stench that you're carrying around. Even after she got you killed, you're still doing what she tells you to?" Hazel countered.

Klaus felt the rumour release a little further. He stretched his fingers, trying to turn his head but not making any progress. 

Cha Cha threw a roundhouse followed by an elbow straight to Hazel’s gut. While the force moved him back, the impact did nothing. Klaus could see the fear in Cha Cha’s eyes as she realised that she wasn’t going to win this one.

“You never did know when to quit,” Hazel said in his grumbling voice. He straightened up, stretching out his arms while Cha Cha fell back into her fighting stance, her fists shaking. 

“I’m done with the killing,” he said, throwing his hands on his hips. “Death will do that to you.”

“You threw everything away for what, Hazel? That donut whore?”

Cha Cha charged at her ex-partner, launching into a fly kick when Hazel caught her around the neck in his beefy hands and twisted. Klaus heard the sickening snap. Hazel let her body fall to the ground.

“I’m done with the killing, but it’s not killing when you’re already meant to be dead.”

Hazel gave him a wink before wandering away, whistling a tune.

Klaus felt the ripple that meant Lila had finally lost hold of Allison’s power. He sighed in relief as the rumour finally broke, lifting a hand to his stinging cheek. Cha Cha had left a decent gash, right on his cheekbone. He hoped it wouldn’t scar.

He felt the cold press of steel against his neck. He edged his gaze down slowly, seeing an arm extend from where the knife was pressed. Lila stood next to him, her arm shaking so much Klaus could feel the blade break his skin. She had to reach upwards to make her threat, but the threat was real enough. He could see it in her tear stained eyes. 

“Make it stop,” she ground out through clenched teeth. Klaus slowly looked up to see two ghosts behind her, a man and a woman in their early thirties. The man looked a lot like Lila, the same serious brow and sharp jaw. 

“Lila, don’t do this,” the woman said, hands clasped in front of her. They weren’t shrieking or screaming like the ghosts Klaus usually encountered, although the woman did have an exit wound through her forehead.

“You’re special, you’re meant for more than this,” the man added, a sad glean in his eye. He looked like he’d been similarly executed.

Lila’s hand was trembling so hard that Klaus feared she’d slit his throat whether she meant to or not.

“Lila, do it.” The Handler had joined them, standing somewhere behind Klaus. “It’s up to you now to finish them off.”

“You’re special,” the man repeated. 

Klaus heard a familiar _thwip_ to his right. 

“No!” Five shouted. “Klaus, just stay still.”

Klaus huffed. Like he could do anything else.

“Lilaaaa!” Klaus heard Diego roar as he ran in from somewhere near where Five was. “Lila, what are you doing?”

“Five killed them, he killed your parents. Kill his brother, take your revenge,” The Handler urged.

“We don’t blame him,” the woman butted in. “He was raised by that man, we knew he was a bad man when he came for you. We loved you too much Lila, even without knowing you were coming, as soon as we met you we couldn’t let you go.” 

“Of course, you’re one of us . . .” Five gasped. “When were you born?” he demanded in the voice he used when he was on to something.

“Don’t answer that -” The Handler snapped but Lila had already responded.

“First of October, 1989.”

Klaus heard the collective gasp of what must have been the rest of his siblings. 

“What? Why are you doing that?” Lila asked, twisting away from Klaus. The knife moved off his skin enough that he could take a deep breath. 

“On October first, 1989, forty-three babies were born all around the world to women who had not been pregnant the day before,” Five recited. 

“Our father got seven of us,” Luther boomed

Diego snorted. “More like he bought and swindled seven of us.”

Lila forgot the knife all together, spinning around to the ghosts that were evidently her parents.

“Is that true?”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s true,” The Handler started, but Lila only had ears for her parents.

“Yes, you were one of the miracle babies,” her mother said lovingly. “The man came to our house the day after you were born. We didn’t even have the chance to buy you a crib - we had you sleeping on folded up towels in a suitcase - when he offered us money to take you.” 

“Your mother and I didn’t even talk about it. We both told him no on the spot and sent him on his way.”

“Who cares!” The Handler shouted, taking Lila’s hands in her own. “It’s a touching story, but the fact remains - Five killed your parents.”

Lila turned to their smallest brother, tears streaming down her face. 

“Is that true?” Lila asked.

Five’s head dropped. “Yeah, it’s true. That job was one of my true regrets.” He sighed deeply. “Back when I first started I was stupid and naiive. I saw the job order land on my desk and I did it, but I should have realised something was off.”

“Off? What do you mean off? You killed innocent people. My parents were innocent people.” Lila’s anger had started to return.

“Because I killed innocent people for the greater good. One man killed here, thousands saved over there. But that job, that job didn’t make sense. There was no reason behind it and now I know why.”

“Lila, you don’t need to listen to this. He’s a liar and a murder -”

“The Handler never came on field missions -”

“Listen to me, you can’t trust him -”

Lila’s head swung between Five and The Handler, both passionately fighting for her attention. 

“Your parents didn’t need to die -”

“He’s lying -”

“ _She_ signed the kill order-” Five said, jabbing a finger towards The Handler. 

Lila’s hand covered her mouth. 

“Don’t listen to him!”

“She knew how special you were and wanted you all to herself, trained up to be her own little soldier. She killed your parents because she wanted your powers.”

“Is that true?” Lila shouted, her voice cracking through the tears. “You killed my parents?”

“ _Five_ killed your parents -”

“I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have listened to her.”

Lila shook her head, tears falling thick and heavy. 

“No . . .nononono,” she murmured, her eyeliner smeared down her cheeks. 

“Lila,” her father said softly. Lila turned around, her breath hitching with each sob. Klaus fed a little bit more of his powers into the two ghosts. 

They glanced over to him with a smile before enveloping their daughter in a hug. 

“If you won’t,” The Handler said, pointing a tiny gun at Five. “Then I will.”

The shot went off before Klaus had the chance to react. Five skittered back, rising back to a standing position. Vanya was all over him a second later, her hands frantically moving, checking for a gunshot wound that just wasn’t there. 

“Oh,” The Handler said, slumping to her knees. Blood pooled from a wound in her chest, spilling over the rich red fabric. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell forward in a heap. 

Standing behind her with the shotgun still raised was the final Swedish brother. 

He looked over to Klaus, giving him a nod. 

“ _Nog är nog_ ,” the man said, shouldering his gun.

“What did he say,” Luther hissed to Five. 

“Enough is enough,” Five whispered back.

“ _Må du hitta frid_ ,” Klaus replied, trying to keep his voice as clear as possible. The man nodded, walking away back into the cornfield. Klaus turned to Luther who looked shocked that Klaus could speak another language, let alone Swedish. 

“He wished him to find peace,” Five translated. 

Diego approached Lila slowly, like he was approaching a skittish cat when she threw herself into his arms. He held her close, tucking her head under his chin.

“What do I do now?” Lila sobbed into his chest. Allison bumped into Klaus’ side. His hand found hers, giving it a squeeze. He looked up to the sky, letting the relief wash over his body. 

“Come with us,” Diego said. “You’re one of us now.” 

His head shot up, looking at them all. 

“We aren’t related though, are we?” He pointed between Allison and Luther. “It’s not like . . .”

“Not genetically,” Five smirked, his hands in his pockets. “That isn’t what made these two weird.”

Allison rolled her eyes while Luther turned beet red. 

“C’mon, let’s get out of here before someone finds us, although how they haven’t already I don’t know.”

Klaus sagged against Allison, letting Lila’s parents feed off a bit more of his power as they said their goodbyes, Diego standing sentinel just behind her. They were pretty cute together, just the right amount of batshit crazy for him to handle. 

Klaus was careful not to let any of his power near the ghost of The Handler who was loitering near her body, despairing over her tragic and untimely death. 

“Hey.”

Klaus spun around to see Hazel was still around. He should have headed back to the other side by now. 

“So um . . . I kinda suck at apologies, but I just wanted to say sorry about the whole motel room thing.”

Klaus smirked, giving Hazel a nod in reply. He’d definitely overdone it with the talking, not to mention the new damage Lila’s knife had done to his throat. Allison assured him it was just a scratch, but Klaus wanted to see for himself. He’s already pouted when Luther pointed out that the cut on his cheek was likely to scar. Vanya had hit him for being so insensitive. 

Klaus tilted his head inquisitively, motioning with his hand vaguely towards the sky. 

“Trust me, I’m eager to get back to my Agnes, but there’s a guy who has been trying to get through to you.” Hazel looked over his shoulder at something Klaus couldn’t see. “He says you need to do it the old school way.”

Not letting his hopes fly away from him, Klaus balled his fists, jamming his eyes closed to feel for the icy blue in his veins. He felt the connection latch on, strengthening as he fed more power to it.

“Urg! Took you long enough!” 

Klaus’ eyes flew open to the sound of Ben’s voice. He was stretching his neck out, shaking himself like he’d been cramped in a box.

“Remind me to never be solid when Vanya blows up ever again. Her powers scrambled me up big time.” 

Klaus pulled Ben in for a hug, squeezing him tightly. 

“You’re suffocating me!” he groaned with a smile. Klaus chuckled. Always with the death jokes.

“Alright, I’m off,” Hazel said with a wink. “Agnes is waiting.” He turned away, before pausing. “Say goodbye to the old timer for me.”

“Thank you,” Allison said, waving Hazel off. 

Klaus felt Ben flicker between solid and incorporeal. 

“Whoa, how much power have you used?” Ben said, flickering again. 

A lot. He’d used a lot. 

In fact, he was going to pass out. Right. About. Now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's okay, he just fainted. Our boy is fine. 
> 
> I was going to make you wait to find out about Ben, but I thought that might be mean. 
> 
> Yay Hazel. So sad he died in the first ten minutes. 
> 
> Thanks @Niennas_Apprentice for the translation advice.
> 
> One chapter to go!


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for goodbyes (and maybe hellos?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're finished! Last chapter!
> 
> Thanks so much for all of your comments, they make me smile.

Klaus woke up to the smell of bacon. He peeled his eyes open, not able to do much else with the familiar heaviness to his body that came with overdoing it with his powers. The room was filled with golden light streaming in through the floral curtained window. 

He was back in his room at the Chestnut House. 

“How are you feeling?” Ben asked from his perch on the exercise bike. Klaus groaned. He hadn’t ever used his powers like that before, although every time he pushed them a bit further he felt like he had the world’s worst hangover, without the stale taste of booze in his mouth or the stench of regret clinging to him. 

He rubbed his eyes with his good hand, touching something stuck on his cheek. He prodded it to discover another one of Diego’s taped-on dressings. 

“Five said you didn’t need stitches. Diego cleaned it and patched you up.”

Klaus nodded, noticing how dry his throat was. He turned his head to find a tall glass of water within arm’s reach on the makeshift bedside table. 

“That was Vanya,” Ben said as Klaus guzzled down the water. The relief to his throat was instant. He rubbed his chest, fingers searching out Dave’s tags. Someone had changed him into his soft sleep pants and a t-shirt, but left his tags on. Klaus was grateful for whoever thought to do that. 

“You’ve been out for almost two days. Ray’s been mother henning like crazy.”

Klaus grunted. As if Ben hadn’t been joining him. He could just imagine the two of them. Klaus let his eyes slide closed. He could almost fall back to sleep if he tried. 

“Everyone okay?” he whispered, noticing a little more strength to his voice. 

“Yeah, Luther won’t need to wax his back for a while, he looks even weirder without that gorilla hair. Vanya’s alright, she’s been hanging out with Luther a bit which is strange. Five is driving everyone nuts. That old man just can’t relax.”

Klaus rolled his eyes, regretting the dull pain that made itself known between his brows. Maybe he could talk someone into getting him some paracetamol at least. 

Ben walked over to the window, looking out onto the street.

“Allison and Ray are fine too,” Ben said with a hint of sadness in his voice. Klaus understood. They would be leaving as soon as Five got that briefcase. While Allison would obviously have loved Ray to come with them, he knew it wasn’t as simple as that. Ray was making progress with the civil rights cause, he had family here, friends, roots. Ray belonged in this timeline. 

“Diego and Lila have been disgusting.” Ben said to brighten the mood. “Just a tip - knock before you open any door,” he said with a shudder. “Although, best way to mess with him is to mention theories about how all of the forty-three might be related.”

That made Klaus smirk. 

The smell of waffles joined the strong scent of bacon. He moaned longingly, making grabby hands at Ben.

“Sorry bro, there is no way I’m making myself solid to get you breakfast when you’re like this. You need to rest up. One of the others will be here soon.”

Right on cue, Diego opened the door. 

“Oh, you’re awake,” he said, looking Klaus over. “You feeling okay?”

Klaus nodded. 

“Liar,” Ben added, but only Klaus could hear him. 

“Want to come down for some breakfast?”

Klaus nodded, trying to push himself up on his elbows but his body felt so heavy but also so light, like it wasn’t his. 

“Hang on, I’ll bring a plate up here,” Diego said, grabbing Klaus under the armpits and unceremoniously hauling him into a sitting position. He stuffed a pillow behind his back, then awkwardly left the room. 

Ray was the one to return with his breakfast with a warm smile.

“Didn’t think you’d ever wake up,” he joked, dragging the stool over to the bed to make a table. He set down a plate of waffles with bacon, scrambled eggs and a sickening amount of syrup. Allison had remembered. 

The waffles were cut into fingers and the only implement was a spoon. Klaus almost felt tears prick at his eyes at the thoughtfulness of it. God, he must be tired. 

Ray sat on the end of the bed as Klaus tucked in, stacking the eggs onto the waffle fingers with a spoon then sandwiching a strip of bacon on top. He dunked the end in syrup between each bite. 

“Ben still here?” Ray asked, concerned. Klaus nodded and pointed his sandwich towards the windowsill that Ben had settled on. 

“He’s been freaking out since Allison told him we lost each other for a bit,” Ben added.

Klaus nodded. He’d done his own freaking out over that. 

Allison came into the room, smiling as her eyes met Klaus’. She rushed forward to give him a hug while he held his sticky fingers away from her beautiful green dress. 

“How are you feeling?”

Klaus nodded, taking another bite of the waffles. In all honesty, he was feeling so much better with a bit of food in his stomach. 

“You saved the day back there you know,” she said with a smirk. Klaus shook his head, looking down at the blankets over his lap. He was the lookout.

“No, really. Even _Luther_ said so.” 

Klaus quirked an eyebrow. Luther hadn’t said anything positive about him, well, ever. 

“And Five was all like _we’re lucky Klaus was there_ ,” Allison said, impersonating Five’s serious tone. Klaus scoffed, taking a sip of his water, trying to hide the smile that was creeping to his lips. 

This time he wasn’t the useless one. He’d _helped_. 

Allison and Ray sat with Klaus as he ate his breakfast, telling him about all he’d missed. They sounded equally grossed out by Diego and Lila’s antics, Ray recounting a story involving a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night that had scarred him for life. Allison told him about Vanya’s new squeeze (and it was a _woman_ to Klaus’ delight). He shared a look with Ben that said _called it_. 

Vanya herself popped up to visit not long after, so Ray took the dishes downstairs while Allison and Vanya sat on the floor on cushions. Klaus raised an eyebrow at Vanya, making the shape of a woman’s curves with his hands. She blushed furiously. 

“So you want to know about Sissy I guess?”

Klaus nodded enthusiastically, settling his hands under his chin, legs crossed. 

“Well, we met when she ran me over. . . “

Klaus managed to make it down stairs that afternoon, sitting on the couch for a bit while Diego, Luther and Lila played cards. Klaus joined in after a game, totally using Ben to cheat until Five ratted him out from where he was reading in the armchair. They kept playing, but held their cards so close to their chests they could barely see which ones they had. 

He went upstairs for a nap, then came back down for dinner. Ray and Allison cooked up a barbeque, sitting outside in the fading sun with their paper plates balanced on their knees.

Klaus felt a gooey sensation in his chest as he watched through the open back door seeing Ray sneak up behind Allison, trapping her at the kitchen bench. She smiled, tilting her head back to steal a kiss. He could tell from the sadness behind their eyes that Ray wouldn’t be coming with them. 

His thoughts drifted to Dave. How could he have gotten so close to him and yet still be so far? This Dave was just too young, he didn’t even know he liked men yet. What was Klaus meant to do, just waltz up to him and tell him he loved him?

Part of him said yes, that romantic part where he told himself everything would work out just like the movies, but the other part knew it was a lie. The age gap between them now was - well, Klaus wasn’t one to judge because he’d probably been the younger guy in relationships like that when he was Dave’s age, but there was no way. Not when he fell in love with _his_ Dave. Then there was the fact that were leaving in a matter of days, as soon as Herb sorted out that briefcase. What could he even ask of Dave right now?

One thing he hadn’t given up on was the draft. Dave had told Klaus he’d signed up the day after JFK died. It was 1963, well before digital records. Maybe he could sneak in tomorrow and steal Dave’s paperwork, or see if Allison would rumour one of the clerks to lose Dave’s file. 

These thoughts were on his mind as he got ready for bed. He couldn’t have Dave, _his Dave_ , but there might be a way to save his life. 

That way walked into his room just as he pulled on his pyjama pants.

“Hey Klaus,” Ray said, sitting on the bed. “How are you feeling?”

Klaus nodded. He felt pretty good, a little tired but overall he was doing well. He pointed to Ray.

“Me? Oh I’m fine, fine,” although Klaus heard the hollowness in his words. As if realising that Klaus saw through his bullshit, Ray sighed.

“It is what it is. I’ve told Allison, I’d rather have the last two years I spent with her than a lifetime with anyone else. I’m the luckiest man in Dallas to have had the time we had.”

Ray smiled up at him. Klaus sat on the bed, leaning in to give his brother-in-law a hug. Ray hugged him back, his breath hitching. 

“That’s not why I’m here though,” Ray said, pulling away after a moment. “I wanted to talk about your soldier.”

Klaus’ fingers found the tags around his neck.

“It won’t be the fairy tale ending,” Ray said, a hand on Klaus’ knee, “ . . but maybe we could stop him dying in that God-forsaken war.”

The next day they caught the bus to City Hall. Klaus was furious when Ray told him he would have to sit at the front while Ray sat at the back with the other coloured folk.

The bus was almost completely empty except for an old drunkard hanging onto the pole near the back doors and a lady with grey curls and a stern snarl sitting up the front near the driver. It was a Saturday, but after the previous day’s events the mood was sombre. There was no-one in the streets. Most of the shops were closed. 

Klaus’ heart stopped when the bus pulled up on the eastern edge of town. A young man in a plaid shirt with dark blonde hair climbed up the steps. He was even more beautiful than he’d been that time Klaus had seen him in the hardware store. He was so young. His face hadn’t completely filled out yet, his jaw not yet as squared as it would be when he was older (Klaus _loved_ kissing along the underside of his jaw, especially the way it made Dave squirm). Those eyes though, they were exactly the same. 

Dave watched Klaus nervously before taking a seat across the aisle from him. Klaus faced the front again, aware he was staring. 

Once the bus started up again, Ray came down from the back and stood next to the empty seat beside Dave. 

“Do you mind?” Ray asked. Dave’s face flushed red as he stared up at Ray.

“Oh, no sir,” he stuttered. Klaus bit his lip at how utterly like _his_ Dave this young Dave was. He saw the old woman turn around in her chair, scowling at Ray. Klaus stuck his tongue out at her. 

“Awful, just awful,” Ray said, shaking his head at the headline of the newspaper in Dave’s lap. Dave nodded.

“It’s a terrible tragedy, sir.”

“No need for sir. I’m Ray.” He held out his hand for Dave to shake. Dave took it with an uncertain smile. 

“I’m Dave.”

“Where are you off to today, Dave?” Ray asked conversationally. 

“I’m going to City Hall to enlist for Vietnam sir . . . I mean . . .Ray.”

Klaus’ breath hitched at the uncertainty in his voice. He looked out the window, willing himself not to jump out of the seat and grab Dave, begging him not to do it.

Ray nodded pensively. “Is it something you’ve been thinking about doing for a while?”

Dave shrugged. “I guess. I live with my uncle who has always said the Army makes you a man.” He looked down in his lap, cracking his knuckles just like he used to do before a mission in Vietnam. 

“Ah, ‘ _the search after the great men is the dream of youth and the most serious occupation of manhood_ ’. Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

Dave looked up at Ray in awe. 

“I’m a college English teacher,” Ray explained with a chuckle. Dave relaxed into a smile of his own. 

“It’s a hard question, that is, how to become a man,” Ray said, adjusting his hat. “I’m much older than you and I don’t think I’ve even figured it out yet, but I think I’m getting close.” 

“Yeah?” Dave asked, turning towards Ray.

Ray nodded seriously. “For me, this is part of being a man,” he said, gesturing to where he was sitting, in the _whites_ section. “Standing up for what I believe in, in a way that I believe in. There have been a lot of men before me and there will be many more after me fighting for the same cause I’m fighting for, but for me it’s not just the cause, it’s the way we fight. With peace, not violence. With our heads held high. With dignity and honour.”

Ray looked over to Klaus for a quick moment before turning back to Dave. 

“Yeah, I’ve heard all those peaceniks going on about _make love, not war_ ,” Dave said, shrugging his shoulders, “ . . . but everyone says this war can’t be won with soft hearts.”

“Are you sure this is the war you should be fighting?”

Dave looked up at Ray, his eyes wide. Klaus thought he saw fear flash through them for just a moment before Dave blinked and looked away.

“What other war should I be fighting, sir . . . I mean, Ray?”

“Well that’s up to you. It depends on who you are.”

Dave scoffed. “How does anyone know who they are?”

Ray paused before he responded.

“Maybe that’s the question you need to answer first.”

“I was doing this today because I wanted to honor him,” Dave said pointing to the paper in angst. “My uncle said . . . “

“But it’s not your uncle’s life. Kennedy did many great things in his life. This bloody war is only one of them - it may not even be remembered as a great thing.”

Klaus dropped his head. He’d seen what happened. He knew for a fact it wasn’t a great thing. Great intentions, maybe, but he knew what they said about great intentions.

“You don’t think I should sign up?” Dave said, eyeing Ray.

“I think it comes back to you deciding which war you _should_ be fighting and how you want to fight it.”

The bus pulled up outside City Hall where the drunkard and the old lady got off. Ray stood up, straightening his tie. Klaus stood up too, standing near the back door so as not to raise suspicion. 

“Isn’t this your stop?” Ray asked Dave.

Dave shook his head with a smile. “I might head down to the memorial, pay my respects instead.”

Klaus took one last look at Dave as he stepped off the bus. He waited on the kerb while Ray got off after him. The bus pulled away with a sigh, the other two occupants scattering about the business. 

He turned away from Ray, hiding his face against a lamp post, wiping furiously at the tears that stubbornly fell.

“Oh Klaus,” Ray said, pulling him into a hug. Klaus covered his face in the shoulder of Ray’s suit jacket, hugging a black man in the centre of the Dallas township during broad daylight. 

“Thank you,” Klaus sobbed. He didn’t even know why he was crying. He was sad knowing that was the last time he’d see Dave, but so happy because he really thought Ray might have gotten through to him. He may have saved his life. 

“C’mon, we’ll find a payphone and call Allison to come pick us up,” Ray said, leading Klaus down the street. 

There were more tears shed that evening when Five shared the news they’d known was coming. Herb would be meeting them in the morning back in the alleyway with a briefcase. 

While the rest of Klaus’ family were delighted, he noticed the way Allison clenched her jaw, looking up at the ceiling as Five shared the news. She held onto Ray’s hand tightly. 

Realising what was going on, the rest of the family gave Ray and Allison some space, tampering down their own excitement, especially Vanya who had convinced Sissy to come with her to the future with her son. Apparently he had some sort of difficulties that Vanya was sure he could get help for in their timeline. Klaus had never seen his little sister so happy.

In the morning, Klaus found Allison at the kitchen table, tucking a letter into the book that had been in her room the day he first arrived. He drew her into a hug, stroking her hair. 

“He’s right,” she said thickly, wiping her eyes delicately as she pulled away. “I can leave here with the happiest memories of my two years with him. I need to focus on that.”

Klaus’ lip wobbled as he wiped his own eyes. He wished his sister didn’t have to leave Ray and go through that pain, but after hearing Ray speak on the bus it crystalised his understanding of why they had to do it. Ray’s fight was here. 

As the others loaded into the car, Klaus wept his way through his goodbyes on the doorstep.

“I wanted to tell you Klaus, before you go,” Ray said, holding him by his forearms (Five had changed the filthy brace to a more discrete bandage). “What I was saying to Dave on the bus - I was thinking of you.”

Klaus sniffed, shaking his head. 

“I mean it. You may not fight your fight the same way I fight mine, but you do it with dignity and honour all the same. That night in jail you showed strength rarely seen in a man, and from what Allison told me you protected your siblings with no thought for your own safety.”

Klaus covered his eyes with his hand, willing the tears to stop. He took a deep breath, biting down on his tongue. 

He took two more deep breaths, forcing his emotions under control. He had something to say.

“I’m going to miss you, Raymond Chestnut.”

He gave Ray one last hug before heading over to the car. Once he was sure he had himself under control, he pushed his powers out, giving Ben his chance to say goodbye. 

Diego wrapped his arm around Klaus’ shoulders, squeezing him roughly. Klaus tipped his head against him, snuggling into his brother. 

Klaus heard Ben shuffle into the back of the car not long after, sniffing. He looked over to see him with his knees pulled up to his chest, biting his lip. He didn’t think ghosts could cry, but maybe his stronger powers changed that. Klaus reached back and patted his arm.

“Urg, right when I started to get a reputation for being a tough guy,” Ben sniffed. 

Klaus laughed.

Allison made it into the seat next to him a few minutes later, tears streaming down her cheeks, but smiling through it all. Klaus pulled her in towards him as they took off together.

*********

Herb was standing at the end of the alleyway with Dot, a briefcase between their feet and the one marked for Five and his siblings in Herb’s hand. Five climbed out of the car and walked over to them, holding his hand out for Herb and Dot to shake. They both gave him warm smiles.

“We’re finally going home,” Five said, nodding towards the briefcase in Herb’s hands. Herb and Dot exchanged a look that Five doesn’t like. 

“Well . . .” Herb started, looking very nervous.

“We were wondering if you could do one last job.” Dot says, bringing her shoulders up to her ears, smile stretched wide. She brings her hands to the front and that’s when Five sees what she’s been holding behind her back.

A third briefcase. 

“You see, as a consequence of all this,” Herb said, waving his hand around the alley, “we have a critical anomaly and we’re a little short of field agents to take care of it.”

“Hey, don’t pin that on us,” Five growled. “We’re not the ones who started that.”

Both Herb and Dot jumped back, Herb holding his hands up in surrender. 

“We aren’t blaming anyone, no sir-ee.” He pulled a file out from a thin leather compendium. “If you would just take a look at it.”

Five opened the file and flicked through the first few photos until he found one that made him jolt. He brought the photo closer to his face, scrutinising the person in it before flicking madly through the papers and finding a name. The connection dropped in his mind. He flashed a look over his shoulder at his siblings gathered together around the car. Ben and Diego were playfighting, doing their best to distract their devastated sister. Luther had a comforting hand on Klaus’ shoulder while Vanya was tucked in Klaus’ arms in front of him as they watched Ben and Diego’s antics. Sissy sat on the hood of the car, Harland on her lap laughing along while Lila jumped into the antics, taking Ben’s side and pinning one of Diego’s arms behind his back so Ben could give him a wet willy. 

He _couldn’t_ do _this_. 

“No, nada, no way. I’m done. I’m retired!” Five said, shoving the file back at Herb.

Herb jittered nervously away from the file, looking up at Dot before speaking. “We know how things used to be done to correct errors in the timeline, but with new management we are hoping to bring in a new way of operating, to make adjustments . . . in a different way.”

Five narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“We only need this individual _removed_ from that timeline,” Herb said slowly. “We thought that maybe you would find another way to remove him than how we used to do things.”

“It’s controversial,” Dot added, evidently thrilled by the idea of changing the rules. “But if anyone could help us show the rest of The Commission that there might be another way to do things, it’s the famous Number Five.”

Five rolled his eyes at her enthusiasm and looked back to the file, glancing once more to his siblings who were watching him from near the car. 

“So no guns?” Five asked, making sure they were on the same page.

“No guns, but you will need another one of these,” Herb said, passing Five both the briefcases. He stuffed the file in his jacket and turned back to his siblings. 

“Ready to go?” Five asked, holding one of the briefcases up. His siblings looked to Allison who nodded through her tears. 

“Yep, we’re ready.” 

Vanya looked up at Klaus, giving his arm a squeeze. 

The siblings circled around like last time. Five handed Luther the briefcase with a nod.

“You’re in charge Number One. Everyone get a hand on the briefcase before Luther opens it. Let go early and -”

“You might get scattered across three years in the sixties?” Ben asked. Five scowled back, shaking his head at the nervous laughs of his family. 

“I thought you would be doing this?” Luther asked, confused. 

Five pulled out the second briefcase, grabbing Klaus’ upper arm. “Klaus and I are taking a different route.”

“Whoa, whoa, hang on, what happened to staying together?” Diego asked, stepping out of the circle towards Five. 

“We’ll be back before you know it, literally.” Five looked up at Klaus. His eyes flitted back and forwards between his siblings, his mouth moving to form words but nothing coming out. 

Ben stepped out of the circle, a hand on Klaus’ shoulder. Five should have guessed that he’d go wherever Klaus did. 

“Eh, might be best if you go back with the others on this one,” Five said. “Trust me.”

“No way,” Ben shouted with an aggression Five would have to start to get used to from Number Six. “Where Klaus goes, I go.”

Five rolled his eyes, pulling Ben away from the group. He yanked his brother down by his jacket, whispering the plan in his ear. When Ben still seemed intent on going, Five made the issue glaringly obvious. Ben’s eyes went wide. He rejoined the main circle with a wave. 

“Have fun guys,” he said, winking at Klaus. Klaus shook his head, eyes wide.

“He’s not coming?” he whispered hoarsely. Five pulled Klaus away so he wouldn’t be sucked into the other vortex. 

“You’ll see him soon enough.”

“Five,” Diego said warningly, “I don’t know what you’re up to but if anything goes wrong, I will stab you.”

Five winced at the dreamy look Lila gave Diego at his menacing words. 

“See you all in a bit. Luther?”

Number One nodded seriously, checking that everyone was in position before opening the briefcase with his ham fingers. 

In a flash Five was left alone with Klaus.

“Ready?” he asked, not waiting for a reply before opening their own briefcase, gripping Klaus’ arm firmly.

*************

Klaus landed hard on his arse. Five, the twat, was still on his feet. 

He stood up, shaking out the horrible itching sensation of travelling through space and time. He looked around. They were in a densely populated street, shops lining the street level with apartments reaching up for many stories above them. People bustled past down the busy street, seemingly not having noticed two people drop out of the sky. They weren’t in the future, Klaus could gather that from the dated clothes people were wearing but they sure weren’t in Dallas 1963 anymore.

“Nineteen seventy,” Five supplied. “Greenwich Village.”

Five led him to a laundromat, straddling the bench seat near the front window so he could look out to the street. Klaus copied him. An old queen with their hair in rollers was folding their washing up the back, smoking on a cigarette.

“What-” Klaus started, his voice scratching. Five pulled something out of his jacket and plopped it on the bench between them. 

Klaus looked down at the open file between them. The first document was a black-and-white image of a man Klaus would know anywhere. 

Dave. 

He looked young, maybe only nineteen, the same age he had been in Dallas. 

The next photo was the one from the VFW - Klaus standing next to Dave with the rest of their platoon. Klaus’ fingers found the dog tags around his neck. 

The last photo was of Dave as well, but not how Klaus had ever seen him. His hair was brushed into a neat wave, his blue shirt pressed and the photo clearly posed for work or something. He looked beautiful. 

There were papers in the file, some with the NASA logo, one that looked like a report of some sort. 

There was another photo of Dave with what looked like a group of friends around a bar. The date on the back was 1st November, 1969.

Dave didn’t die in Vietnam.

Klaus flicked through the papers, looking up at Five. The papers stamped with _Confidential_ and The Commission’s logo.

The penny dropped. 

Five used to work for The Commission, eliminating anomalies from the timeline. 

Dave was an anomaly. He’d survived. 

Five was here to kill him. 

“No, no, NO!” Klaus shouted raspily, grabbing his brother’s shirt. Five tried to push him off but Klaus wasn’t letting him get away. 

“What - you thought you’d bring me here to watch?” he choked out, only half the words forming. “To watch you kill him?” 

He knew Five was screwed in the head, but this? Klaus clutched at his own chest, one hand still firmly holding his brother. He was struggling to get air in, the memory of Dave being shot choking him. 

“Klaus, calm down.” He could hear Five’s hushed voice in his ear. “I’m not going to kill him.”

Klaus looked up, only just realising his vision was blurry. He wiped at his eyes, trying to draw in a deep breath. Five was looking at him intensely, his own face only an inch from Klaus’. His small hand was rubbing up and down Klaus’ arm.

“I’m not going to kill him,” Five repeated, “ . . but we do need to remove him from the timeline.”

Klaus let go of Five, grabbing at his dog tags again. His thumb ran over the lettering stamped into the metal as he tried to block out the images of that day on the hill in Vietnam.

“Remove?” Klaus asked, coughing with the effort. Five sighed, running a hand through his own hair. 

“Whatever you and Ray did in Dallas, Dave made the decision to not sign up to the army, thus not die in Vietnam. Usually, the timeline would be resilient enough to cope with a change like that, it would have an impact on the future but not change the course of the timeline all together.

“When Dave decided not to sign up to the military the day JFK died, he instead was inspired to contribute to his country in a different way and one that Kennedy was heavily linked to. He enrolled in college to study aerospace engineering. This also had the added bonus of making him ineligible for the draft. It turned out that Dave was good, very good. NYU headhunted him to lecture at their campus which is what brings us here.”

Klaus couldn’t keep his smile off his face. He knew his Dave was smart, but aerospace engineering? A lecturer? Klaus could just imagine him in a white shirt tucked into tight chinos . . maybe he wore glasses now . . .

“This brings us to the problem.”

The smile slid from Klaus’ face as he was broken from his daydream. 

“In just over three months, NASA will call him up and ask him to be a last minute replacement for a engineer on the Apollo 13 mission. That mission failed to land on the moon. The shuttle only just made it back with the crew. If Dave goes to NASA, he’ll find the faults before take off and the mission will land on an as-yet uncharted area of the moon. An area that should remain uncharted.

“You need to convince Dave to leave the timeline before NASA calls.”

Klaus watched Five warily. He didn’t mean, he couldn’t mean . . .

“Obviously, he doesn’t know you so you’ll need some time to make it happen. I’ll be back in three months to pick the both of you up. Make sure that he’s ready.”

Was Five saying that he was going to leave Klaus in 1970 for three months to seduce Dave into coming with him to 2019? 

Five tipped Klaus’ mouth closed with a finger under his chin. 

“He has to be removed from the timeline one way or the other. If you do your job, The Commission won’t need to kill him.”

Klaus nodded seriously. He would do it, even if it killed him, he would get to know Dave. He would convince him to come with him to the future. Even if it wasn’t like it was before, even if they never found the love they had in Vietnam again, he could do this to save his life. 

He slid the photo of Dave with his friends at the bar out from the file and held it up for Five. He pointed to the good looking dark haired guy sitting up next to him in the picture. 

Five sighed, pulling out a sheet of paper from the file. 

“It says here that he’s single. He’s dated a few people here and there, but nothing long term.”

Klaus grabbed the sheet of paper and scanned down the list of names. A few girls’ names at the start, but most of the names were guys’ names. He smirked. 

When Klaus met him in Vietnam, Dave had never come out, even to himself. Here he was, dating men. 

He leafed through to see another sheet of paper, a handwritten letter of some sort, addressed to the Dean of Sciences at NYU. He would recognise Dave’s writing anywhere, although it was a lot neater than it had been scrawled on the back of a beer coaster in Vietnam. Klaus scanned through the contents. Dave was petitioning for the re-employment of a colleague who had been unfairly dismissed after he was found to be a homosexual, Dave himself coming out in the letter in support of his colleague. Klaus could tell from the tone of Dave’s words that he was an asset that the university couldn’t afford to lose. 

Klaus placed the letter proudly back in the file. 

Dave had found his fight.

“I need to give you a tracker,” Five interrupted, holding up a green gun that looked a lot like the machines used for piercings. He pulled Klaus’ head downwards without giving him a chance to protest and pressed it against the back of Klaus’ neck. He felt a sharp sting as the gun broke his skin. Klaus sat back up, rubbing the site with a wince. 

“You can’t have those dog tags with you though.”

Klaus closed his hand over the metal, reluctant to place them in Five’s outstretched hand. 

“I’ll give them back to you, in three months.”

He sighed, looping the chain from over his head and placing them carefully in Five’s hands. 

This wouldn’t be easy. He didn’t even have his voice properly working.

Klaus grinned as a thought occurred to him. He pointed to his legs, pressing them together like a tail. 

Five groaned. “Yes, I’m aware this is exactly like The Little Mermaid. God, you and Ben really do share a single brain cell.”

***********

Five shook hands with his brother, watching him bound out of the laundromat towards the address from the file. He really hoped Klaus had a better plan than just knocking on Dave’s door - personally he would have tried to catch him at the university - but he knew Klaus would stop at nothing to succeed in this mission.

He took out the briefcase, adjusting the dials to three months into the future. He opened the case, relishing in the easier way to travel that didn’t drain his energy. After a quick jump, he found himself in the same street, but it was much warmer and sunnier, the trees at the end of the street now covered in green foliage. 

Five pulled out the device Dot had given him that read the tracker. It was about the side of a transistor radio with a telescopic antenna and a small radar screen. 

He turned on the switch on the side and pulled up the antenna. A green dot flashed on the screen. So Klaus still had the tracker. 

Now to see what havoc he’d brought upon this timeline. 

Five followed the dot deeper into Greenwich Village, noticing that there were a lot of people heading in the same direction as him. Many of them were wearing bright colours and flamboyant outfits, others with cameras and hats looking more like tourists. Five swallowed down the dread that welled in his gut. What was Klaus up to?

He checked the exact date he’d landed on the briefcase. 

Oh _shit_.

Five pushed through the thickening crowds, ducking under a police barricade to dart around the back of the cruisers used to block the street and gain a better vantage point. He spotted a mail box on the other side of the street and dashed across, flashing from the ground to the top of the box while the spectators were distracted looking at the street in anticipation. 

He glanced down at the radar again, looking at the dot. It would be almost impossible to find Klaus in the crowds, but it seemed like he was moving closer. Five squinted, looking through the crowds for Klaus’ scrawny form. Lucky he was so tall. 

The crowd noise rose. He checked the dot again, seeing that Klaus was moving closer. He could hear music playing in the distance.

Really, he should have seen this coming. Five shook his head, laughing out loud to himself. 

The crowd roared as the parade for the Christopher Street Liberation Day - later to be known as the First Pride Parade - came into view. Distorted speakers blasted _The Kinks’ Lola_ from a pickup truck crawling along the street, leading the parade. Right in the middle of the front row, holding Dave’s hand in the air and wearing a huge grin was Klaus. His brother was wearing a flashy sequinned dress that moved as he danced along, blowing kisses at the crowd. Dave kept looking at him, smiling in a way that made Five feel a warm fuzzy feeling that he didn’t like. 

He checked the time on the tracker. This would be going for a few hours. He remembered a coffee shop that he’d visited in 1965 in the Jewish quarter that sold some of the best coffee he’d had in the sixties. He tucked the tracker away, taking one last look at Dave dipping Klaus like a dancer and kissing him as the parade streamed around them before he zapped across the East River.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done!
> 
> I know that some of the exact dates of the stuff from 1970 are out, but they were all in 1970 so close enough for me!
> 
> I absolutely love The Kinks and Lola came out that year. Such a good song and even has themes about 'being a man' that I thought tied in nicely (in my humble opinion). 
> 
> Will I write the 1970 stuff? No idea - maybe?
> 
> Thanks everyone - it's been fun :)


End file.
